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TV^K PriJ.KX HAD SCARCKl-Y COMPLETED 
HIS WORK t)X THIS VOLUME, AND HIS 
.\L\XVSC'K1PT WAS VKT IX THE HANDS OF 
THE PRINTER WHEN DEATH, THROUGH 
HEART FAILURE. CAME TO SILENCE THE 
VOICE OF THIS WELL- KNOWN LECTURER 
AND STILL THE PEN OF THE AUTHOR- 
JOURNALIST FOREVER. 




KHACiii:i) I H(iM IH1-: r.. \ A. u. k. .\ i \ an iuki-n in< i imhskink 



In Fair Aroostook 



WHKRE ACADIA AND SCANDINAVIA'S SUBTLE 

TOUCH TURNED A WILDERNESS INTO 

A LAND OF PLENTY 



By CLARENCE PULLEN 




Bangor, Maine 

Published by the Bani^or & Aroostook Railroad Company 

1902 



-^1^ 



h 



t1"\ 



IHt LifaRAKY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Coplei R«e«lvt0 

DEC 31 1902 

Cepyright Eititty 

CLASfi CO XXo. Nt. 
% «J J- if- i, 
COPY B. 



C'di'VKii.in, i:»()2 
Bv THH Bangok <!i Akooshkik K. R. Company 



A copy of this bocik will lie sent to any addrc 

un receipt of fifty cents by 

(iEo. M. Hoii(;htiin, Traffic Manager 

Bangor iS: Aroostook Railroad Company 

Bangor, Maine 



' ■C'V'V ' 



Priiiled /')' Clidfli's 11 (ilass J- Com/xiny, BiDnror, Maine 



CONTI^NTS 

Page 

FuoNTisriKri-: — iiniiid Fulls on die M.-lnlm 2 

CliArTKi! I. — The Kiilr.iiicc into Mniiif's (jlrent (iniiie and (ijirden 

( omit y ^ 

CllAi'iKi; II. — Ashl.ind ;ind its(;ie;it S.-iw-mill — Tlie Impoiiiidiiii;' of a 

Moose li» 

Chai'TKK hi. — Fish Ifivei- W.-itcis — l'oitMi;e F;il<eaiid ( anip Iversoii . 27 
CiiArTKH IV. — Into Mniiie's Ac:idi;i — The Fish of the Kaole Lake 

< hain — The IJonian Invasion ot Aroostook S8 

CllAl'TKi; V. — Foit Kent — Its IJloeklionse and Training School — The 

Aroostook \\ ai- 48 

CiiAi'TKK VI. — More ot tin- .Vcadiaiis — Tlie Girls of the Training 

Sehool — '' Madawaska ■■ — Tlie Story of the Aeadians .... 49 
CiiAi'TEK \TI. — From Over the Sea — New Sweden — The Fruitage of 

a (ireat ( oloni/ation Ide.i 65 

CiiAi-ri:!; \'III. — Aiiriculturc — The Haekhone ot Aroostook I'rosperity 

— ( oniing Towns ot lhc(ounfy — I/envoi 79 




liN h AK 1 HE.- 1 jS' 



iKlll" — IIML KIVEK MEETS THE ST. JOHN. 



In Fair Aroostook 

CHAPTER I. 

THE ENTRANCE INTO MAINE'S GREAT GAME AND 
GARDEN COUNTY. 




=^HERE are two major notes in the impressions borne 
^^^ upon the traveler in the journey northward from 
-%'y;|/ Brownville, over the Aroostook division of the 
t''^"^ Bangor and Aroostook Railroad. One is the syl- 
!s"'<C<ii van charm of the landscape ; the other the sense 
of the great industrial productiveness of the region into which 
he is entering. Up to this point, from Bangor, the route 
has lain through an open country of farms and villages ; a few 
miles beyond Brownville the woods have closed in upon the 
right-of-way and at Schoodic, with its magnificent lake stretch- 
ing far to the eastward among long hills and jutting promon- 
tories, he has entered the wilderness. The dense forest growth 
that shuts in the track on either side is not of an imposing 
character ; it is composed mainly of low spruces and cedars. 
But their sombre shades are agreeably relieved by the lighter 
greens and silvery tints of birch and poplar ; the thick barriers 
part here and there in water glimpses, rippling blue, or the 
train, winding along the face of a slope, overlooks a vast 
expanse of mountain and woodland scenery. Mt. Katahdin, 
the noble central landmark of Maine's fish and game region, 
in the early morning looms afar off in the northeast, directly 
in the path of the train. x\s the forenoon wears on it shifts its 



8 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



position in relation to the niovins^ cars successively to the 
northwest and the west until at noon, seen from Ashland 
Junction, it towers, in lonely grandeur to the south of we^t. 




NO BARNS TOO (iUEAT FDR THE HARVEST; 



At the sidings along the line are piled great heaps of hnn])er 
and pulp wood and hemlock bark awaiting transportation to 
the south. Sometimes a sawmill is passed, and its pungent 
odors of freshly sawed spruce and pine mingle pleasantly with 
the forest fragrance that attends the wa>- ; more often the exist- 
ence of the mill is indicated only b\- the lumber piles at a 
station and a wagon road leading into the woods. At 
Millinocket Station, from which trainloads of paper are daily 
sent to feed the printing presses of America, a spur of track 
leads to the Wonder Town of pulp and paper hidden some- 
where behind the rolling hills. But these, even Millinocket, 
are sidetrack i.ssues, so to speak, compared with the pro- 
ductiveness of the land beyond from which come the long freight 
trains passed on the way bringing Aroostook lumber and 



IX KAIK AROOSTOOK. 



9 



potatoes and grain and hay southward to the markets of the 
eastern and the southern vStates. While Maine for a half- 
century was peopling with her sons the territorities of the 
west, her own great northern county, greater in area than 
Massachusetts, and of unsurpassed fertility, received scarcely 
passing attention, it being known to people in general mainly 
through its historical association with "the Aroostook war." 
Now things ha\e changed and Aroostook county, already 
standing third among all the counties in the I'nited States 
in the value of the products of the soil, is yet only in the initial 
stage of her great development. It is this region which we are 
on our way to explore, and the road which takes us thither, the 
Bangor and Aroostook, is the vital arter}- through which pulses 
the life of traffic and travel that unites it with the rest of the 
State and the business centres of the whole country. 

Winding among gravelly hills, skirting the bases of "horse- 
back" ridges pushed up b>- moving ice of the glacial period, 
and speeding, straight as an arrow, over the tangents that span 
long stretches of the route, the train glides smoothly to the 
north and east. This pathway- in the wilds is a marvel of fine 
location and thorough construction. The Bangor and Aroos- 
took road is young and growing; it has gained in stature and 
done well in a business way since it began its journey through 
the wilderness, ten years ago, to plant its stakes in the 
Northern Canaan and grow up with the coimtry. Now with 
the aspiration of youth it 
commands the resources of 
prosperity, and it proposes to 
have it distinctly understood 
that while, in a sense, a back 
woodsman, it is no back num. 
ber in an}- respect, and that 
it knows how to keep up its 
end -with the best of the great 
iron roadways. With all the 
rough hurry work that it has 
to do in the handling ol 




I H\\ AV IN THK WII.DS 



10 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



lumber and potatoes and such, and in the building of new lines 
tlirough the clearings, it everywhere keeps up a spick-and-span 
front and its passenger ser\-ice is all that could be wished for in 
elegance and eflficiency. In this connection I overheard a con- 




U EAL I H AH.OA1 — AKO(IST( 



)I-FERING T( 



versation while traveling in the upward bound morning train, 
which is worth repeating. Two men with fishing gear, evidently 
on their first visit to the Maine forests, were commenting on the 
up-to-date character of the train appointments. 

" In our State a compan>- would have thought any old cars, 
with a stump-puller to haul them, good enough to take people 
in and out of the woods," remarked one of the men. " Now on 
this road everything is fresh " — 

"Except the manners of the traimnen," interrupted the 
other. 

"Yes, they're all right too. What I meant to speak of was 
the vestibuled cars— and the parlor car— and the general 
appearance of newness and neatness in ever^■ detail." 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



11 



"You'd expect a road to keep itself spruce carrying such 
.consignments as this all the year round, wouldn't you?" 
spoke up a man from the seat behind. He was a timber 
operator from Houlton, who had been explaining points of 
interest to the strangers, and he pointed as he spoke to a 
freight train on a siding, 34 of whose 50 cars were loaded with 
long spruce lumber billed for Bangor or Boston or Brazil. 
The two men expressed due approval of the sentiment, and 
in.spired by this a commercial traveler in the opposite seat 
had begun to formluate something in the same line based upon 
''starch" when a deer on the track, which raced the train for 
a quarter stretch before taking to the woods, drew general 
attention, and the previous question was suffered to lapse. 

It is the time of May, and even so early in the season, far in 
advance of the rush time of summer travel, there is a goodly 
representation of tourists and sportsmen from the cities among 
the passengers. Fishing rods and camping conveniences are 
much in evidence, and at almost every stop of the train parties 
of fishermen leave the cars and are left amid their gear and 




BEAl'TY SPOTS YOU NEVER CEASE TO ADMIKE. 



12 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



hampers on the station platform. Ladies there are among^ them, 
Dianas of llie rod and line, who have discovered the charm of 




IN MAINE 



the wildwood, and who choose, in the Maine lakes, to ang^le in 
stiller, clearer waters than those in which are cast the flies of 
fashion. Moreox'er, 

Woiuan, lovely vvoniun, 

Quite divine, so sweetlj' limnnii, 

finds no discomfort in the pervading consciousness that no 
gloxes and veilings are so becoming to the fair hands and face 
as the bronze gifts of the sun, and that grace and animation are 
never more effectively inspired than by the enthralling exercise 
of matching a six-ounce rod and a hundred feet of braided line 
again.st the turns and rushes of a square-tailed trout. And all 
these advantages thrown in with exuberant health and exhil- 
arating sport. 

The question of suffrage may wait, but her enfranchisement 
into the pleasures of tlie canoe and fly-rod is a right that no 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



13 



woman will ever give up to the monopoly of man again, once 
she has experienced the fun of going a-fishing. 

Fifty miles of primitive forest threaded, the west and the east 
branches of the Penobscot River crossed and left behind at 
Norcross and Grindstone, and then, at Stacyville, the woods by 
the trackside open in patches of cleared land with grass and 
grain growing green among the black stumps. At Sherman 
there are wider fields with fewer stumps, and cattle and sheep 
at pasture, and here, tlie commercial traveler aforesaid remarks 
genially to me : 

" We're in Aroostook county now. You'll find the country 
getting more open all the way from here on till we come to the 
fiftj'-acre grain and potato fields. It's a country of fertility and 
growth. The idea of growth and expansion pervades every- 
thing up here. Why, dough will ri.se twice as fast up here as 
it does down Bangor way, and if you leave your walking-stick 
stuck into the ground over night you'll find in the morning that 
it has taken root and is sprouting branches — and if you let it 
alone it will bear apples or plums in another year ! Strange, 
but your power of astonishment will soon get worn out if you 
travel Aroostook in growing time." 

I think that he speaks with some exaggeration, but that there 
is a fine, breezy optimi.sm in his statements, suggestive of the 
boundless west, which I like. Indeed I have ob.served this west- 
ernism of tone among the passengers on the train from the time 
we left Brownville. Anyone who has .something to sa}^ may open 




Cf)lII-n WE NOT 



WE U EEEL KATAHDIN S PRESENCE. 



14 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



conversation easily with his neighbor, and there is a comrade- 
ship among the fellow-travelers of a da}- that is characteristic 
rather of Kansas or Colorado than of New England. In fact, 
Aroostook has stood for all that the fairest western Eden boasts, 
and more, from the time that President Cram preached his ser- 
mon from a text that was a radical variation of the time-honored 
"Go west, young man," the application of which was the open- 
ing up of this vast eastern garden land to traffic and settlement 
with his famous Bangor and Aroostook railroad. 

I will not sta}^ now to speak of what this enterprise has 
wrought for Maine in the enlargement of her resources and the 
turning of the tide of emigration, which so long had taken the 



^^^n^' ^ 




! ..■— 2fW5^ ^ ■■ . ''^ 


i^ 


mSBK^KK^^^^^^^^B^^^^ii^^^^^^a^iimiM 


M 



STANDINt; KNEE-DEEl' IN FRACiKANT MEADOW? 



westward way, to territory within her own borders. The inter- 
est of the scenes through which we are passing admit of no 
(li\-i(lc(l attention, for Aroostook liegins at the very border to 
reveal her buxom charms in a series of cumulative tableaux. 
As the train rolls on the trackside clearings expand into fields. 



IN FAIR \ROOSTOOK. 



15 



The stumps show fewer, and the level openings rise away into 
knolls and ridges checquered by wide stretches of turf and 
tillage, with backgrounds of hardwood forest. The landscape 




SNUt; IN THE LEE OF THE SHELTERING BAKN. 



contours are smooth and rounded ; the sky line becomes a toss- 
ing emerald sea as the tree tops stir in the breath of June. For 
a while the woodland along the line of road continues to assert 
supremacy in the landscape ; but even where long, level 
stretches of cedar swamp sullenly shut in the track, there rise 
into view on the east high uplands smiling in groves and farms. 
In fenced pastures sheep and cattle, sure sign of wise husbandry 
of the soil, give a pastoral charm to the scene. 

Everywhere are the signs of a great material prosperity. The 
fields look well kept and fertile ; with the farm houses, small 
and neat, are immense barns with sheds and granaries. The 
streams filled with running logs, the mills b}' their banks, signify 
wealth of production. Not once have the cars ceased to be well 



16 



I N }■ A I K A K 0( )ST( )0 K 



iilled with passengers during the journey. As sportsmen and 
lumber operators, by twos and threes and dozens, have left the 
train at every wayside station, others have boarded it in their 
place, and here and there a crew of roughly garbed lumbermen, 
fresh from the " drive " have taken passage in the smoking car. 
This movement of life extends into all branches of trade in 
Aroostook and buying and selling are done in a large way. 

"Aroostook is the county where 1 like best to go," said a 
commercial traveler, w^ho.se line is tobacco. "There are no 
small orders up here. A merchant at any cross roads or station 
in the woods, where there may not l)e five houses in the town- 
ship that you can see at one time, thinks nothing of ordering ])y 
the carload any brand of 




4 



goods that hits his fancy. 
And they have the trade 
and the money to back 
their buying." 

Besides the rural l)eaut>- 
of the scene, which one 
learns in Aroostook always 
to expect and ceases never 
to admire, I saw two things 
at Ashland Junction that 
particularly drew my atten- 
tion. One was Katahdin 
across the woods, forty-five 
miles away in the south- 
west, standing massive and alone, robed in imperial hues of 
white and purple. The other was a large sack transferred at 
the junction, which had come up from liangor that morning 
consigned to a camp on tlie line of the railroad extension now 
building be\-ond Ashland and it contained one hundred loaves 
of Italian bread. 

"There are sex'eral hundred Italians at work on the Fort 
Kent extension of our line," said Mr. Moses Burpee, the chief 
engineer of the Bangor and Aroostook road, to me. "At most 
of their camps there is an Italian baker who makes the bread 



lidM.l.K ]> 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 17 

for all the gang. The camp that this is consigned to evidently 
is short a baker, but Italian bread must be forthcoming to have 
to send the length of the line for it." 

For a county which until a decade ago was practically unknown 
to the people in the rest of the State of which it is a part this 
wonderful Aroostook has had both an antique and a cosmo- 
politan sort of colonization. The Gauls came first — or the 
Norman-French, rather, as perpetuated in the Acadians — who, 
dispossessed b}- the English successfully in Nova Scotia in 1755, 
and in lower New Brunswick, in 1784, ascended the St. John 
river and found peace and permanency at Madawaska, from 
which their settlements have been extended for a distance of 100 
miles up and down the St. John valley on both sides of the river. 
Eighty-six 3'ears later, led by " Father Thomas," a colony- of 
fair-haired Scandinavians, from the land of Thor and Odin, 
planted itself in an Aroostook township, where it has thriven 
mightily and made of the wilderness a fruitful garden, and now 
the Italians are here, building through the northern wilds a 
highwa}' more scientific and ser\'iceable than the ancient mili- 
tary roads which bound together the conquests of the Roman 
arms. Unlike their great ancestors, these modern legionaries, 
their appointed task completed, will peaceabl}' retire from the 
land they have invaded ; Init while they remain, though the 
world be laid to tribute to supply them, there must accompany 
their march the macaroni, the goat's milk cheese, the garlic and 
pepper, the salted sardines and the Italian-baked bread, the love 
of which abates not in their hearts wherever on the earth's face 
they may make their hal)itation. 




^rg 




Now point meets point, and 
dipping bough gazes in rapture 
at herself. The mountain sees 
his mate below ; canoe and rock 
their image show — all Nature's 
breath is hushed and low'. 




CHAPTER II. 



ASHLAND AND ITS GREAT SAW-MILL. THK IMPOUNDING OF 

A MOOSE. 

'A /^T is hi.i;h noon, and at Ashland Junction I am to 
<^ make a new departure. I have decided that be- 
jff j fore x'isiting the more settled parts of the count}^ I 
<^ will turn off into tlie woods, taking the branch 
.'C^'^^o^ road to Ashland, and thence continuing ni}- jour- 
ney- along the Fish river chain of lakes, to Fort Kent and the 
Acadian villages. Beyond Ashland I must travel by wagon, for 
the railroad extension now building to Fort Kent will not l)e 
completed before the end of tlie autumn of this year. 

F'rom Ashland Junction the l)ranch road, turning northward, 
plunges at once into the woods. F"or o3 miles, to Masardis, 
the route lies through a forest of spruce and cedar, broken by 
saw mills and stations in clearings, and with vSt. Croix lake 
and river lying for most of the way parallel with the track. 
From Masardis the road follows the valley of the iVroo.stook 
river ten miles down to Ashland with farms becoming more 
and more frequent on the broad slopes and intervales, as the 
train advances. But the character of the country is still dis- 
tinctly forest, and I glance at the "Big game record" in my 
Bangor & Aroostook folder, that I- ma}' judge of its capacities 
as a hunting ground. From this record I learn that during the 
three months of the hunting season, last year, 592 deer and 79 
moose were shipped from seven stations on the Ashland branch, 



20 



IN FAIR AROO.STOOK. 



of which 52(5 deer and 74 moose were shipped from Masardisand 
Ashland stations. It is to a hunter's paradise, indeed, that I 
have come. 

At Ashland station, the present terminus of the branch, while 
the other passengers went up to the village on the hill in buck- 
boards, I waited for the carriage of Capt. Orcutt, the leading 
livery proprietor of the place, who was there to meet Mr. Burpee 
and myself. The little delay gave me the chance to talk with 
the station agent who told me the trouble that a gang of section 
men had l:)een put to the day before by a moose, a two-3'ear-old 
bull, which persisted in trying to walk straight through the wire 
fence that encloses the railroad's right-of-way. The section 
men had found him tangled in the wires, and once had extricated 
the creature and sent him on his way. A little while after he 
was again involved in difficulty with the fence. This time the 
foreman had taken the moo.se into custody. 

"Here's one of the men now," said the station agent. 
" He'll tell \ou all about it." 




\vhi:kI': mokk i-vn than at i'dutac.!; l.\kk 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 21 

" 'Twas a thankless job a-helpin' from throuble a cratbur 
that could not understand that your intintions were mint in 
kindness," said the section man. "An' what with the worruk 
of unsthringin' him b}' main strinth an' dexterity from the 
woires, a-watchin' all the toime that he didn't kill some one of 
us which he was thryin' his best to do, our patience was sorely 
thried. But we got him clear once, an' we were on the safe side 
of the fince, an' the boss siz kindly to the baste, 'It's a bad 
job, well inded. Go, an' good luck go wid yes.' We've lost 
toime an' patience, but we gets to worruk an' afther a while the 
Frinchman, Tony, goes down the line to fetch up some tools 
that are left behoind, an' he calls back : 

" ' Sacree ! Here's dat a-dam moose a-thryin' to lug the 
whole fince along.' 

" It's the same baste sure, an' he's fast agin in the woires, an' 
this toime the boss he siz : 

"'We can't spind the ointhire toime of the company's 
imployees in shovin' mooses away from the finces," siz he. 
*' Since this one can't be made to respect the property of the 
B. & A., oi'll impound him for safe-kapin.' Fetch a rope one 
of yez.' 

"We ties up one of the crathur's fore legs, an' we gets a rope 
around his neck before we clears him from the woires. Thin' 
we lade him, wid some pershuasion, to the village an' puts him 
in a barn. An' there he be, a charge on the town, a-awaitin' 
for Mr. Carleton, the game connuissioner, to sind worrud what 
is to be done wid his trespassing baste." 

Here was a man in this Maine back settlement telling of the 
tying of a bull moose and taking him to the barn much as a 
farmer might speak of restraining a breachy cow and he was 
talking in the best of faith. 

"I'll take 3-ou round to see the moose, before we leave," said 
Capt. Orcutt, as we started from the hotel, after dinner. We 
found the animal tied to a post in a stable peaceably munching 
hay. At this season, his antlers had not sprouted, but he was a 
big fellow who looked as if he would be a formidable assailant 
should he take it into his head to turn hostile. As it was, he 



99 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



did not take kindly to strangers but. at their approach woukl 
rush savagely at them as far as the length of his rope would per- 
mit, although he already was on such terms of acquaintance 
with his keepers that he would take food from their hands. In 
his rushes to attack, he did not advance with head down, as a 
steer would do with the purpose of tossing the object of attack 
with his horns, but with nose ad\-anced and his liod>- held in 
readiness that he might rear and strike forward and downward 
with his sharp edged hoofs. I left the moose to the care of his 
keepers, who seemed more worried o\'er the situation tlian he 
was, as they were liable to a legal penalty for having a moose in 
their possession, and yet were loath to let this one go free to 
wreak further devastation on the h. isi A. railroad fences. A 
week later I heard at Presque Isle that the moose had ])assed 
through Bangor on his way to Monmouth, Me., consigned to 
Hon. L. T. Carleton, game commissioner, who probably will 
present liim, in Ixdialf of the State, to some zoological garden. 




NEW Sweden's homes are cozy. 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 23 

The town of Ashland, which is twenty-five miles above 
Presque Isle, on the Aroostook River, contains 1,0S0 inhabi- 
tants, and it is the snpplyin.i^: point of a wide area of fanning, 
lumber and sporting territory. It contains the great plant of the 
Ashland Manufacturing Company, a starch factory and black- 
smith, millwright, a caq^enter and boatbuilding estal)lishments, 
and it is the centre of an extensive business in transportation of 
people and supplies in and out of the game and lumber woods. 
Two of its stores which I visited, carry large stocks of hardware, 
paints, oils and stoves, and the smooth, deadly looking rifles 
and hunting knives, the trim varnished rods and the belts and 
ammunition and tackle in vast variety exhi1)ited along with the 
mill and lumbering ware was effective testimonials of the game 
and fish po.ssibilities of the country about. Ashland is a point 
of departure for Coding (S: Walker's sporting camp at vSquare 
Lake, Patter.son & McKay's camp at Machias Lake, Leon 
Orcutt's camps at Greenlaw and Big Fi.sh Lake and T. J. 
Bennett's Camp Pleasant. 

Ashland already has become the re.sort of a considerable num- 
ber of summer and autumn visitors drawn to it by its clear, 
bracing air, the charm of the surrounding scener>' and by the 
facility with which desirable fishing and hunting grounds may 
be reached from it. The village, numbering GOO inhabitants, 
stands on a plateau connnanding extensive views up and down 
the Aroostook valley with the forests and mountains beyond. 
It contains two hotels and three churches, a Methodist, a Con- 
gregationalist and an lipiscopalian church, and there recently 
has been completed a public hall that will comfortably seat 
500 people. A more attractive site for an inland re.sort could 
scarcely be desired. The houses of the village are newly built 
and well kept up ; the water excellent, and the breezes that visit 
the town come cooled and perfumed acro.ss vast areas of woods 
and waters. Ashland, with its elevation of 700 feet above the 
sea, .stands pre-eminent among the sanctuaries through whose 
portals the sneezing, snuffling demon, hay fever, cannot enter, 
and the cheapness with which comfortable living maybe secured 
is making this woodland oasis yearly more and more the refuge 
of the victims of that malady. 



24 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



Forest episodes mix quaintly with the everyday life of a town 
in which one finds so generally the comforts of a high civiliza- 
tion, may use the telephone and may read the morning papers 
from Bangor at 12.30 o'clock p. m. At the Exchange Hotel, 
where I dined, some of the towns-people were talking of the 
pretty adventure that had befallen an Ashland physician a night 
or two before. Driving in the dusk through the woods in the 
suburbs of the village he was aware for some time that an animal 
was running beside his carriage. vSupposing that his Irish 
setter had followed him from the house he did not investigate 




Ff'Kr KKNT HAS MANY FINE KF-'^I DENIES. 



until, on coming to a hill the horse .slackened pace, and he 
leaned over the wlieel to .speak to the supposed dog. It was a 
deer which, at the sound of his \-(^ice, turned and bounded away 
into the woods. 

Three miles ])el()\v the \illage on the Aroostook River and 
connected with the railroad by a .spur of track, is the great mill 
of the Ashland Manufacturing Compan}-, which manufactures 
and deals in all kinds of luml)er. For miles up the cliannel 
extend the booms that liold the logs .sent' down the river from 
the various lumber "operations" of the winter before on its 



IX FA IK AROOSTOOK. 25 

headwaters. These logs are drawn up the long incline, through 
the entrance to the band saws, which cut them into long lumber, 
with an ease and swiftness that suggests the slicing of cheese. 
From the band and the edging saws the boards, planks, joists 
and beams pass out, on rollers through the rear end of the build- 
ing along a raised platform that extends far down from the mill. 
All along, as far as the rollers travel, a planked slide slopes 
sharply down to a parallel platform beneath, and as the stick of 
timber arrives at its appointed place a touch of a lever within the 
mill throws it from the rollers and it slides down upon the plat- 
form below in readiness to be loaded upon the Bangor and 
Aroostook cars drawn up at the siding alongside. 



:^if 





'F Asm. AND MANfFACTURING CiOIPANV 



While the band saws and edgers are turning out the long 
lumber, other machines are sawing out laths and clapboards, 
and stripping the bark from the spruce slabs and butts which 
then become merchantable as pulp wood for paper stock. Every 
product of the log is utilized, for the bark and sawdust supply 
the fuel for the engines that run the mill. A hundred men are 
employed who turn out 130,000 feet of lumber a day. Last year, 
working from Feb. 5, to Dec. 1, the company sawed and shipped 
at this mill, 25,799,119 feet of long lumber, about 4,000,000 
laths, about 5,500,000 clapboards, and from 5,000 to G,000 cords 
of pulp wood. 



26 



IX FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



The Ashland mill is the largest sawmill in Aroostook county 
and one of the largest in the state of Maine. There are 50 saw- 
mills in the country which in 1900, according to the U.vS. Census 
Report, manufactured 79,550,000 feet of lumber. In the same 
year 1 12,500.000 feet of logs cut in Aroostook county were floated 
down the vSt. John river into the British provinces where they 
were sawed into long and short luml^er. With the completion 
of the extension of the Bangor & Aroostook road to Fort Kent 
there will be opened an avenue of transportation from the vSt. 
John \'alle\- that will transfer a material part of the manufacture 
and shipment of this vast \-olume of lun:ber from Canada to the 
territory of our own state and nation. 

Two miles below Ashland the railroad extension crosses the 
Aroostook river at a grade GO feet above the bottom of the 
channel. The bridge, a noble and shapely structure. 777 feet 
long, is composed of four central and four shorter end .spans 
resting on piers of quarry-faced ashlar granite, with concrete 
foundations carried up as far as the water surface. A few miles 
further along, near Little Machias lake, the line passes the crest 
of the Aroo.stook river water shed and descends to Portage, on 
Portage lake 18 miles from Ashland, h'or the remaining 38 
miles to Fort Kent it follows the Fish ri\er waters. 




.l.I^riNIM. I .VKI'S I-KOM HILL ID HIIL, 




CHAPTER III. 

FISH RIVER WATERS. PORTAGE LAKE AND CAMP IVERSON. 

ISPI Ri\er is a picturesquely wiudin"- waterway on 
which are struno' like turquois gems upon a silver 
cord, the lakes of a chain unique in extent and 
lorni and beauty. It is a river of most original 
turn, an expansionist of the first water, which ap- 
parentl>- has l)ent its course expressly that it might annex every 
water-sheet in sight. From its headquarters in Clayton lake, 20 
miles west of Ashland, it flows northward into Big Fish lake from 
which it emerges, at the north end. to pass in an easterly course 
through Hat Pond, and thence meander southeast, 'JO miles, to 
Portage lake. From Portage it bends northwest to catch vSt. 
Froid, and northeast to enter Eagle lake. Then, having trav- 
ersed the long northerly arm of Eagle lake, and the reach of still 
water known as Soldier pond, as if satisfied with its acquisitions, 
it narrows again to a river to dance a quickstep down its channel 
to the St. John river. 

There are far more lakes than the water-sheets through which 
the river passes, that go to constitute the Fi.sh river system. 
Into Eagle lake, through wide thoroughfares that lead from lake 
to lake, comes the outflow of Square lake, Cross lake, Mud lake 
and Eong lake. They are parts of a water chain unmatched in 
all the world, a chain so linked and looped that b)* taking a canoe 
at Eong lake one may voyage without a carry for 100 miles, 
keeping with the current all the time, till having passed through 
these five lakes, and down the Fish and the vSt, John rivers, he 
finds himself at Van Buren on the St, John, only 10 miles from 
the point of starting. Taken altogether the lakes and ponds 
composing the fish river system are 15 in number. They cover 
an area of 89 square miles and drain a water shed of 890 square 



28 



IN FAIR AROOvSTOOK. 



miles. They all have the common characteristic of deep cool 
waters, and abundant game fish which in these lakes attain an 
extraordinary size. 

We came to Portage from Ashland, Mr. Burpee and myself 
in a two-seated wagon, with Capt. Orcutt as driver with his pet 
span of spanking bays. The road lay mainly through woods 
with clearings and farmhouses interspersed, and camps of rail- 
road laborers. Now one may ride to Portage in the cars, and 
before the snow flies this year may go by rail to Fort Kent. 
Where the turnpike conies to the lake the country opens, bring- 
ing into view some farms, a store or two and a hotel. By the 
shore, with verandas fronting the lake, stands Camp Iverson, 
and here we made our quarters for the night. It was the sun- 
down hour ; out upon the lakes fishing parties in row boats and 
canoes were drawing troll lines through their rippling wakes, 
and between the house and the shore was a pleasant bustle of 
fishermen and talk of the day's catches. From the wharf a 
group of swarthy laborers from the railroad camps were catching 
chub and shiners, for all is fish that comes to Italian hooks and 
finds its way made straight to the frying pan. It was late for 
fishing by the time supper was ended, but I rigged my rod and 
with Osgood Smith, timber inspector on the railroad construction 
work, went out in a canoe to try my luck. A pound-and-a-half 
square tail which struck in the last gleam of da}' was all that fell 
to my line, 1)Ut we paddled in the light of the rising moon four 




II. I. 1 A.\D 1 liiLIJ 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 29 

miles down a shore on which the woods were broken in several 
places by clearings in which stand the cottages of city residents, 
who make Portage their summer home. Among the trees on 
the high opposite shores glowed the lights of two .sporting camps 
and the lake, even in the night, seemed far from lonelv. 




IN MADAWASKA — A LAND OF PLENTY. 



Portage lake, bending almost in a loop from west to north, is 
seven miles long by three in breadth, with .shores that rise into 
high hills on all sides. On the face of the high point opposite 
Portage round which the lake curves northward are the sporting 
camps of D. O. Orcutt, and up the shores on the left of the settle- 
ment are other camps. This lake, like all the larger ones of the 
Fish river system, abounds in square-tail trout and togue and 
landlocked salmon, and its shores are a cho.sen resort of big 
game. Camp Iverson, at Portage, comprises two frame cottages 
which will comfortably accommodate sixteen guests. They are 
supplied with water of uncommon purity and coldness which is 
led into the house through pipes from a hillside spring. The 
proprietor, Capt. A. Iverson, is a sturdy Norwegian, who once 
was a shipmaster, but who many years ago quitted the sea and 
cast his lot in Aroostook county. His fishing fleet, of which his 
steam launch Brunhilda is the flagship, contains four canoes and 
nine rowboats, and he keeps it in commission with true nautical 



30 



IN FAIR AROOvSTOOK, 



precision and attention to detail. The liousekeeping at the 
camp is pleasingly homelike, and it seemed a passage from the 
Kdda to hear the names Ragnhild and vSiegried of his fair- 
haired daughters, and Aagot. the name of his comely wife, 
spoken in this American Northland. 




MKE A TcillCH liH THE FATHERLAND — THE SKIDOK IN NEW SWEDEN. 

Portage Lake is safe and pleasant to navigate with any craft, 
and u]) Fish River, which enters it from the west, a launch 
capable of carrying twenty-five persons may ascend four miles 
from the lake. With the opening summer, the landlocked 
salmon, which at the melting of the ice from the lake followed 
the schools of smelts in their migration uj) the river, return to 
deep water and may be caught by trolHng with spoon or 
minnow. The square-tailed trout keep near the shore so long 
as the water is cool and, until the middle of June, may be taken 
at almost any point up or down the lake. Later they take to 
the spring holes in the lake, and the deep places off against 
the mouths of the inlets. They are abundant and eager, and 
in spring and early summer respond well to a spinner baited 



IX FAIR AKOOST(JOK. 31 

with a minnow, trolled with 75 or 100 feet of line along the 
shore. On the morning of my stay at Camp Iverson I went 
out alone in a canoe at five o'clock and came back at six 
with three fine square-tails, all taken fighting within a short 
distance of the landing. Then, after breakfast, came our start, 
made under a lowery sky with frequent sprinkles of rain. But 
the da.\- gave nuich |)romise of interest to nie, for its journey 
was to bring us into the Madawaska territor}- — the Acadian 
French region of Aroostook where dwell in primitive simplicity 
the descendants of the expatriated people of Evangeline. 

Our way lay over an hisioiic highwav of Aroostook, the old 
military road to Fort Kent. Its course over the hills affords 
magnificent lake and forest and mountain views wdiich today 
were obscured l)y mist and rain. The road was through woods 
from the time we left the farms near Portage until we came 
to an opening in which were some unpromising looking farms, 
which, with several buildings grouped somewhat closel>- together 
by the roadside, evidently constituted a connnunity. This, Capt. 
Orcutt informed me, was Buffalo. 

" But wh\- is it called Buffalo?" I asked, thinking the name 
an exotic one in the Maine woods. 

" It's more than I can tell,"' said the captain. " All I know 
is that that's the name it goes by." 

" I can tell you the answer that a boy on the road here gave 
to the same question once," said Mr. Burpee. " He was an 
honest looking lad, and he plainly meant to tell me as well as he 
could. ' Why is the jdace called Buffalo? ' I inquired of him." 
"He studied for a moment over the framing of his answer. 
' If you were there once, and knew the people, you wouldn't 
wonder,' he said." 

This was expressive but indefinite, and, with the mystery of 
its christening unsolved, we left Buffalo-in-the-\Voods to the 
glory of its name. Tiiere was more forest and much of it to 
traverse, but when we struck clearings again it was another 
region that we had entered and the houses that we saw were 
the habitations of the x\cadian French. 




CHAPTER IV. 

INTO MAINE'S ACADIA. THE FISH OF THE EAGLE LAKE 
CHAIN. THE ROMAN INVASION OF AROOSTOOK. 

ROM the woods we emerged into an open country 
that witlened as we advanced, and by the road- 
side, among tilled fields and grass lands, stood 
little unpainted frame houses, with shingled roofs 
and walls. It is not the habit of the Acadian to 
rush the building of his home after once it has been rendered 
habitable, and thus the outer covering of the houses often 
presented a variegated pattern of shingled patches, boarding, 
and tarred paper or birch-bark sheathing. The barns were 
small, and among the out-buildings of the newer frame house 
often stood the log hut, now relegated to the uses of a granary 
or a potato bin, which had been the earlier residence of the 
owner. The farms were apportioned into potato and pea and 
buckwheat patches, with always a pasture in which fed a little 
flock of sheep ; for in the homes of this quaint region the arts of 
spinning and weaving, like the folk tales and songs of the older 
Acadia, still survive and in the farmers' cots one finds that : 

" The wheel and the loom still are l)U.sy, 

Maidens still wear their Norman caps, and their kiitles of homespun, 
And by the evening tire repeat Evangeliue's story." 

Equally faithful to old tradition are the onion patches by the 
houses, and the balm-of-gilead trees the buds of which, when 
steeped in aqua-vitae, afford a tonic most salutary to the Acadian's 
constitution in sickness and in health. The looms and the 
spinning wheels at this sea.son, before the time of sheep shear- 
ing and the flax harvest, were not much in evidence to the 
passer by, and the maidens that we met on the highway, or who 
peered at us from doorways, tended rather to American sailor 



34 



IX FAIR AROO.STOOK. 



hats and to braided hair than to Norman caps. A prett}' cus- 
tom, not learned from the Americans, is one the children have 
of alwaj's saluting the stranger whom the}' meet — the girls with 
a courtesy, the boys by lifting the hats. At one place, near 
Nadeau, we passed a school house from which, it being near the 
noon hour and school dismissed, the children were swarming 
like bees from a hive in spring. The edifice was a degree or 

two larger than a sentry-box 
and I counted twent}^- three 
children of ages ranging from 
five to fourteen years, that 
emerged from its portal — all 
comfortably clad and pre- 
.senting an array of faces as 
l)right and pretty as any 
school of its size anywhere 
would be likely to furnish. 
After them came their teacher, 
a graceful, dark-e}-ed young 
woman, who sjDoke with a 
French accent and who wil- 
lingly sta5^ed to show us the 
school room. Even with the narrowness of the fiat boards that 
served for seats and desk tops, it was not easy to see how so many 
children could find a chance in this bird-house of a school room 
to recite and study. But that they did, and that they learned and 
understood their lessons, the teacher, a graduate henself of the 
training school at Fort Kent, assured us. The books used in the 
Madawaska common schools are mainly in the primer grade 
and to teach these children intelligently it is necessary that the 
teacher should know French as well as English. 

At Nadeau the military road, which has led over the hills from 
the time it left Portage, comes down to the Fish River again 
and cro.s.ses it between St. Froid and Eagle Lakes. Here the 
railroad extension, which has followed the valley from Portage, 
reappears and, passing the river, continues down the shore of 
Eagle Lake. The Fish River is crossed twice by the extension, 




LITTLE AC.\DIAN« 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 35 

with bridges respectively 180 and 270 feet long. The only 
other important bridge on the new line is one of 75 feet span 
over the Allagash. All the bridges are of iron and of most 
approved construction, and they rest on piers of granite masonry 
or concrete. 

Few stretches of railroad in America lie for an equal distance 
through a region so replete with tranquil landscape charm and 
quaint historical association as that which is traversed by the 
last twenty miles of the Bangor & Aroostook extension to Fort 
Kent. From Ashland to Nadeau much of the route is shut 
from the view of the broad lake and woodland spaces to right 
and left b^- the dense forest growth. But at Nadeau and 
be5'ond come views of Eagle Lake, the blue oval centre of a 
vast amphitheatre of wooded hills as it stretches off to the east, 
and a long water reach where the road skirts its seven-mile arm 
extended to the north. Then Fish River narrows again to a 
stream and as once more it widens into placid Soldier Pond the 
woods on the slopes beyond open in clearings and Acadian 
farms. Thence for seven miles, to its terminus on the shores of 
the St. John at Fort Kent, the road follows the curves of the 
steep, high bank, first on the left and then on the right of the 
river winding in a clear rippling current down the gravelly 
channel at its base. With all the heavy work involved in its 
construction, the gradient of the road is extraordinarily even and 
its elevation at Fort Kent, after following the Aroostook and 
the Fish Rivers down for a distance of fifty-one miles, is but 
thirty-seven feet lower than at Ashland. 

More interesting even than the natural scenery is the human 
aspect of the community which we have entered. Planted by 
the refugees of Grand Pre, Pisiquid and Chignecto, in the 
valley of the upper St. John River at a date when the United 
States Constitution was as yet unframed, it peacefuU}' has con- 
tinued the customs of old Acadia, while on the Penobscot and 
the Kennebec the settlements of Bangor and Augusta grew from 
scattered backwoods cabins into civic existence and the frontier 
line of American civilization in .Maine advanced northward to 
Greenville and Caribou. The French is still the vernacular 



36 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



tongue of the country and the faces of the women are of the 
piquant French type which often is pretty and which, however 
plain, never lacks some handsome feature effectively displayed. 
One has missed a phase of American folk-life, unique, antique 
and quaintly interesting who has not seen along the Fish River 
and in the St. John valley, the narrow farms, the gable-roofed 
houses and barns, the buckwheat fields, the grazing flocks and 
the primitive home life of the Acadians. 

Eagle Lake and the plantation of Eagle in which it partly 
lies, derive the name from the white-headed eagle which fre- 
quents this locality. By the postolfice and store in what may 
be termed the official center of population in Eagle Plantation, 
the railroad extension has crowded the military road to one side, 
taking the grounds occupied by the old highwaj- for a consid- 
erable distance, while the way for foot and wagon travel now 
lies over a finely graded turnpike newl\- made by the compan}-. 




HUMBLE — BUT "hdMk" TO AN KAKIA' ACAUIAN FAMILY 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



37 




MAKING PLOGUES 



Here we began to meet teams with fishermen on the way from 
Fort Kent to their club house on the shores of Eagle Lake. A 
party of sportsmen came up from the lake on their return to 
Fort Kent, bringing a fare of 
twenty-five pounds to the man 
of square-tail trout and togue 
and a nine-pound landlocked 
salmon as trophies of their 
expedition. I admired the sil- 
ver fish, which was a beauty. 

" You should have seen the 
twenty-three pound salmon 
taken yesterday in Square 
Lake. It was caught by a 
man named Weltz — Kben 
Weltz from Caribou," said 
Dr. Edgar Flint, who was one 
of the party. " We saw it 
weighed. It was the biggest one taken so far; but there seems 
to be no limit to the size to which Square Lake fish will grow 
and no one knows who'll be ne.xt to break the record." 

I think it well might be biggest. Such a fish would be hard 
to parallel in any waters, even Sebago, the native home of 
the great fresh- water salmon. The story would have seemed 
incredible to me even from a source so authentic, but that I 
already had verified the account of the twenty and one-half- 
pound and the sixteen-pound salmon taken in Square Lake last 
autumn, in the nets set to catch fish for the hatcheries, and so 
could scarcely doubt the possibility of larger fish that had gained 
the growth of another 3-ear. The wonder of these Square Lake 
salmon is that they all have grown from fry placed in these 
waters only nine years ago. There is something marvelous in 
the abounding fish life in all these deep, cool basins of the Fish 
River system, but Square Lake holds precedence over the others. 
Its togue are the biggest known in Maine except those that 
swim in the mysterious depths of Moosehead, and from its waters 
were taken the twelve-pound square-tail trout, which holds the 



38 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



world's record as the largest of its species ever caught. One 
gets used to big figures in Aroostook county — and with Eagle 
lyake at the foot of the slope at my feet stretching niysterioush' 
off among the hills, and in the knowledge of the wide thorough- 
fares that make it, and Square Lake, and the three lakes beyond, 
all one great water sheet, it seemed not difficult to credit any 
tale of leviathan trout that range the waters or to expect any 
Startlingly fortunate response to the barbed lure cast within its 
depths. 

From Eagle, our way, for all of the distance to Fort Kent, lay 
through a French settlement, a line of farms strung along the 
militar\' road, with seldom a cross road, or a sign of human kind 
to be seen away from that beaten highway, except the distant 
farms that came into view across the river after we had got 
beyond Eagle Eake. All the farms and buildings were of the 
same pattern, the fields stretching back after the old Acadian 
fashion, to the wooded hills on the one hand and down to the lake 
or river bank on the other. Drinking-troughs overflowing with 
cold, clear water led down to them from hillside springs, 
were frequent b}' the wayside, a provision inculcated b\' the good 
Saint Francis, who loved both man and beast. But the farms 




RICH MKADliW LAND AM) KOLLINt; HILLS" 



grew better, the buildings improved in aj)pearance and the popu- 
lation became denser as we drew nearer Fort Kent, and from 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK, 



39 



Wallagrass, with its handsome church and convent, the remain- 
ing six miles into Fort Kent lay through an unbroken line of 
the farms, some of them with good hous.^s and capacious barns, 
of the thriftier class of Acadians. 

Near Wallagrass we turned from the liiglnvay and went down 
a farm road to the shore of Soldier I'ond where Mr. Burpee had 
occasion to visit a point of the 
extension work, at which 
there was a camp of Italian 
graders. A frame barracks 
made tight with a tarred paper 
sheathing accom m odat etl 
about half of the gang of fift>- 
men. The others had built 
for themselves little huts of 
boards and saphng trunks and 
had covered them completely, 
walls and roof, with sods. 
These abodes were fitted with- 
in with one or two bunks and 
little else and were occupied 
by two, and in some cases, three or four workmen. The 
entire crew, divided into little messes, bought their provisions 
at the Italian commissary store and cooked and ate them 
in the open air — the bread being baked by the commi.ssary 
baker and sold fresh to the men daily. In the commissary store, 
partitioned from the rest of the barracks, was a profusion of 
the supplies particularly valued in the Italian workingman's 
cuisine — beans, pork, macaroni, freshly-baked bread with acces- 
sories quite as essential in shape of goat's milk cheese, olive oil, 
and strings of garlics, and of little, round, dried red peppers. 
By invitation of the commissario I broke and tasted a loaf of the 
bread. It was as light and cri.sp and sweet as bread could be, 
alike attractive to sight and taste. After eating of it I could 
understand why that, where unprovided with a baker of their 
own nationality in the camp, the Italian laborers on the Bangor 
& Aroostook road should choose to send away, as far even as to 




'IK NliRTHLAM) 



40 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



Bangor, when necessar}', to procure bread to their Hking. " Try 
a-thees, sir, tha sardine. It's a verra fine," said the com- 
missario. He was opening a tightly packed and covered 
keg or firkin, holding perhaps two gallons, as he spoke. It 
was filled with large salted sardines packed as solidly together 
as if put into place under a screw press. 1 took a sardine and 
divided it with Mr. Burpee. It was very sah, but it was not 
half bad to eat as an accompaniment to a piece of bread ; nor 
was a bit of the cheese, hard and dry as it was, with a flavor 
like that of new Roquefort. 

The bakery, in a house by itself, with its vast, glowing brick 
oven from which the fire was raked before the batch of dough 
was put in ; the table, half filling the room, piled liigli with fresh- 
ly baked loaves, was well worth the seeing, if onlj^ to realize the 
artistic possibilities that may attend the gift of our dail}' bread. 




A( ADIAN MAIDHNS OF TO-DAY 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 41 

On a plateau back of the barracks were the tents of the civil 
engineers in charge of the northerly division of the railroad 
extension. Their families were with them, sharing the camp 
life that in the Aroostook seems to attain ideal conditions, with 
the cool, northern sunnner air and scenic surroundings in a land 
where no dangerous wild beast prowls or venomous reptile 
intrudes. As we drove away in the hush of the sunset hour the 
Italians by their fires were cooking their evening meal of beans 
boiled with macaroni and flavored with garlic and cheese and 
peppers. The white tents of the engineers, the long, low bar- 
racks, the sod huts, like grotesque earth mounds, and the 
swarthy figures grouped against the blaze of a dozen fires, with 
the background of the placid lake and forested hills beyond, 
would have served well as the mise-en-scene of some grand 
opera. 

Where the town of Fort Kent begins and its farming suburb 
changes into village, is not apparent in the southerly approach 
along the military road. But as we advanced on our way the farm 
houses became larger, and verandas and lawns becam-e a frequent 
feature ; then the buildings and grounds of the Madawaska 
Training School on the right, with handsome, half-foreign 
looking girls picturesquely grouped like wild flower clusters, 
upon its steps and verandas ; and the board sidewalk that bor- 
dered the roadside were notification that we were in the town. 
Ahead appeared stores and ofl^ices fronting us from the road 
that leads up the St. John valley, and, in a green, open field 
between the road and the river, stood the famous blockhouse 
the tutelary shrine in peace and the bulwark in war of the his- 
toric town of Fort Kent. It is a region fraught with martial 
reminders, this peaceful nook of Acadia at which we have 
arrived. We come to it over a military highway, a fortification 
confronts us at the end and the Hotel Dickey, at which we 
put up, was once a barrack. 



CHAPTER V. 

FORT KENT. ITS BLOCKHOUSE AND TRAINING SCHOOL. 
THE AROOSTOOK WAR. 



}?^^'yA\,:H- Acadian 



remembered, Fort Kent was settled by 
•C"' 7/ \ V' ^ ' .^^..vwcw. refugees and others. It was named from 
^JS/Mi^Xx^^ the fort erected in 1841, which was named for Gov- 



ernor Kent ; was incorporated February 23, 1869, 
and embraces all of Township 18, Range 7, and 
most of Township 18, Range 6, and its population, by the cen- 
sus of 1900, was 2,528. It contains large general stores and 
stores for the selling of hardware and farming tools ; is the site 
of the lumber, grist and carding mills of the Fort Kent Mill 
Company, and of two other grist mills and a tannery ; has four 
smiths besides carriage and harness and paint manufacturers ; 
contains two hotels, the Eagle, since named the Dickey, and 
the Morneault, and the Madawaska Training School. 

As seen by the visitor the town is built in the form of an E, 
along two streets — one the military road from Ashland, and the 
other the St. John valley road into which it comes — in a 
spacious river and valley environment of exceeding beaut}-. It 
has several handsome modern residences ; its long river street is 
crowded with stores and shops and houses, and the names on its 
business signs might have been copied from a Paris directory, 
so essentially French they are. The town is on amicable terms 
with its sister village, Clairs, on the Canadian side of the St. 
John River, and a rope ferry connects them. The only rail 
communication that Fort Kent has with the outside world is by 
way of the Temiscouata railroad, across the river, by which, 
taking the train at Clairs, one may go to Edmundston. From 
there he may go, on the Canadian Pacific, west to Quebec, or east 



44 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



to Fredericton and St. John, or, leaving the train at St. Leonard, 
cross the river to Van Buren, which is the northeasterly ter- 
minus of the Bangor & Aroostook railroad. 

Following the completion of the railroad extension from Ash- 
land, of which it will be the terminus, the town of Fort Kent 
will take rank among the foremost of the Aroostook towns. Its 
isolated position on the northern border of the State, with no 
railroad facilities except such as are afforded by the Temiscouata 
line across the St. John River, has so far retarded the develop- 
ment due the natural advantages of its site. Even under such 
conditions its growth has kept pace with the development of the 
country north of the Aroostook River and from the time of the 
Aroostook war, in 1839, it has been an important supply point 
for lumbermen and the trade center for a considerable population 
of Acadian farmers. The coming of the railroad will materially 
increase its availability as a distributing point, and as a place of 
customs entry from Canada, and will make profitable the exten- 
sive manufacture of lumber. Along this avenue of transporta- 
tion a considerable part of the more than 110,000,000 feet of 
Aroostook luml)er that yearly is driven down the St. John to 
be manufactured in New Brunswick will find its way through 
Maine to markets on American soil. Beyond the commercial 
prospects that are now at hand there is a promising future for 

Fort Kent in its eminent 
advantages as a health and 
pleasure resort. 

Its situation upon the pla- 
teau along which the military 
road comes into the town from 
the south affords many pleas- 
ing residence sites, and the 
beautiful valleys of the St. 
John and the Fish rivers un- 
fold a succession of charm- 
ing views from every point of 
approach. Across the St. John 
the railway station,' the 




:•-•$<. 



^^•r 



4*i.- 



HOliT KEN I 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



45 



houses and the old church of the Canadian village of Clairs 
stretch along the base of the hills that roll northward to the 
"divide" of the St. Lawrence valley. Along the river valleys 
to the east and south, carriage roads lead away from the town 
in long day's drives through picturesque Acadian settlements. 




AN INTELLIGENT PEOPLE — APPKECIATIVE OF EDUCATION 

In the pure, clear air of this upland town, five hundred and fifty 
feet above the sea, pervaded with the health of the surrounding 
evergreen forests, are found rest and invigoration for shattered 
nerves and minds and bodies overwrought with the haste and 
tension of city living. As a headquarters for sportsmen it is an 
ideal place, situated as it is upon the border of the great north- 
ern game region of Maine, and receiving the Fish River after 
that stream has gathered the outflow of its fifteen lakes, all easy 
of access and teeming with the choicest fish. 

Once in its history, before the present advent of the railroad, 
with all the innovations that attend its coming, has the peace of 
this old Acadian town been invaded. Its blockhouse, standing 
picturesquely on the plateau by the junction of the rivers, is a 
memorial of the time when the Maine militia marched northward 
in 1839, to defend the border from Canadian invasion in the 
Aroostook war. Another blockhouse, built at the same period, 
but long since fallen to decay, stood by Soldier Pond, seven 



46 IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 

miles up the Fish River and the railroad embankment now covers 
its ruins. 

Some famous names figured in this bloodless war. Gen. Win- 
field Scott, from his headquarters at the Augusta House, in 
Augusta, directed the movements of the American troops, and 
among the young officers who came up to the St. John with the 
regular troops to garrison Fort Kent, were George B. McClellan 
and Robert E. Lee, who, twenty-two years later, as commander- 
in-chief of vast armies were to confront each other on southern 
soil in the greatest and most sanguinary of modern wars. 

It has been the fashion to speak derisively of the Aroostook 
war, which, in some of its aspects, certainh' presented some 
ridiculous and opera-bouffe features. But the mid-winter march 
of hastil}^ levied militiamen, through deep snows and forest 
fastnesses, from Augusta and Bangor two hundred miles to the 
northeastern border, was neither easy nor mirthful. And it was 
recognized by the thoughtful statesmen and soldiers, who from 
Washington and Augusta directed the military operations and 
conducted the negotiations, how narrowly a storm-cloud of war 
threatening the peace of two great nations was averted, with no 
outbreak beyond the belligerent proclamations of the Maine and 
the New Brunswick governors, the massing of troops on the 
border, and two or three farcial arrests of individuals. 

It was the promptness of the State of Maine, supported by the 
National Government, to act in defence of its boundaries that 
brought the British Government to reason and saved a disas- 
trous war, for which, at the time, our antagonist was less 
prepared than we. The Ashburton treaty, which was the ending 
of the matter in dispute, while relinquishing our claims to ter- 
ritory beyond the St. John River, secured us the headwaters of 
that river, and boundary concessions of much value upon the 
great western lakes ; and Maine was substantially reimbursed 
by the general government for her outlay in war expenses. 

At Fort Fairfield, a hundred miles along the border to the 
eastward, is another blockhouse similar to that at Fort Kent. 
These archaic fortifications are interesting memorials which 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



47 



properly are preserved and treasured. But the student of niili- 
tar}' science has but to look at tlie map of Maine to see in the 
Bangor & Aroostook' railroad the effective means of guarding 
our large northeastern frontier in these days of modern warfare, 
in which rapidity in massing men and supplies to the point of 
attack or defense is the key of victory. Built by a railroad 
company from its own resources for the development of peaceful 
commerce, this line fulfils every military strategic requirement, 
with its alignment as straight almost as the flight of an arrow 
from its stem at Brownville to Houlton. its course of a hundred 
miles along the frontier to Van Buren, with the spurs that 
bring it to the border at Fort Fairfield and Limestone and the 
branch now building to Fort Kent on our northern boundary. 
No road built in America could have asked and received a 
National Government subsidy, on grounds of aiding the national 
defense, with greater rea.son and justice than this masterful road 
which, of its inherent vitality, has grown and ramified through- 
out x\roostook and brought that fruitful and once remote reofion 




FORT KENT NDKMAL SCHOOL 



48 IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 

into close coinuiunity with tlie rest of the State and tlie country 
at large. 

Of an interest and purport more modern and far more essen- 
tial to existing conditions than the old fortifications is another 
institution of Fort Kent, the Madawaska Training School. It 
was established twenty-one years ago under an act of the Legis- 
lature, which was modified some years later, authorizing the 
trustees of the State normal schools to locate permanently and 
to maintain for not less than eight months annually, the Mada- 
waska Training School for the purpose of training persons to 
teach in the common schools of the Madawaska territory. The 
people living along the valley of the St. John, from Grand Falls 
to Fort Kent, were at that time, as in a less degree, they are 
now, almost wholly a French speaking community. 

The purpose of this school, as announced in its catalogue, is 
to educate French teachers in the FvUglish language, especially 
for the common schools in the Madawaska territory. It takes 
from the schools existing teachers and some of the most 
advanced pupils and endeavors to give them a thorough knowl- 
edge of the elemental y branches taught in the common schools. 
It seeks, by constant drill, to so perfect them in reading, writing 
and speaking the English language that they may teach it 
intelligently in the schools of the Madawaska territory. Its 
buildings, situated in spacious grounds which front upon the 
Military road and extend back to the Fish river, comprise a 
school house and a boarding house. The school house, with 
large, finely lighted recitation rooms, includes a finely finished 
hall with a seating capacity for three hundred persons and a 
stage of 18 by 26 feet, which connects with two convenient 
dressing rooms ; the boarding house will accommodate one 
hundred scholars. Its rooms are free of rent to the student, 
except for a charge of $1.50 per month to cover the expense of 
lighting and heating. Tuition is free to all who live in the 
State. 



CHAPTER VI. 

MORE OF THE ACADIANS. THE GIRLS OF THE TRAINING 
.SCHOOL. "MADAWASKA." THE STORY OF 
THE ACADIANS. 




NOTHING in my visit to this 
fascinating Aroostook has im- 
pressed me more interestingly 
than its Acadian people whose 
ancestors have figured so famil- 
iarly in song and story. It was in my 
two visits made on the same day to the 
Madawaska Training school that I first 
felt that I was getting into touch with 
the natures of this quaintly primitive 
folk. The attendance at this time was 
small — only thirty-five pupils, I believe. 
In the winter previous there had been one hundred and twenty- 
six ; but it was now late in May and most of the pupils were 
away teaching, or helping their parents in the spring planting. 
In nn- morning call I heard some of the recitations in class 
rooms ; then met all the pupils assembled in the big general 
study room. They mostly were girls of about 16 3'ears, shapely 
of figure, with faces of marked intelligence and animation and 
well modulated, melodious voices. They were quick to compre- 
hend and they plainl}' understood their lessons. In tint of skin 
their number was about evenly divided between the blonde and 
brunette types. The children of French-Canadian strain were 
the dark ; the Acadian children were the fair ones — for the 
Acadians, it should be remembered, are of the Norman-French 
strain and Evangeline, as described in the old French poem. 



50 * IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 

preserved in the Hotel Fronteiiac, in Quebec, was blue-eyed with 
golden hair — " hair golden as ripened corn." 

Driving past the school in the afternoon where the girls were 
promenading on the sidewalk b\' twos and threes, it was pleasing 
to find that they all recognized the stranger of the morning with 
a cordial smile and bow. Pleasanter still it was to sit on the 
schoolhouse veranda in the hush of the long Aroostook twilight 
listening to old French melodies, songs of the voyageurs and the 
coureurs des bois, sung with much expression and feeling by a 
bevy of prett}' Acadian girls gathered in impromptu grouping on 
the steps. Songs such as " Rouli Roulant Ma Boule Roulant," 
which has rung out everywhere that a French boatman's foot 
has stepped in America, from Hudson Bay to Florida ; and 
another song to a beautiful, semi-plaintive melod\- of which b}' 
grace of that charming training-school graduate, Miss Elizabeth 
Ann Daigle, of Saint David, I have a translation I will repro- 
duce in all its naive poes}^ : 

MADAWASKA. 

I\Iadiiw;i«ka, dear native laud, 

'I'liou whose sonorous and beneficent nainc 

The billows of St. John river repeat to tlic tlowe) y b,inl<. 

When gazinji at your grand nature, 

For as the source of all rejoicing 

Our heart gently murmurs. 

ll(jw good it is to 1)6 an Anici'lc-iii. 

Let the great voice of our mountains 
Which vibrates amidst the fir trees, 
And the echoes in the valleys 
IJepeat to your distant shores, 
Tlie flowers and the green i)ralrle, 
I>lke unto those of Eden, 
All sing to our softened hearts, 
Ho.w good it is to be au American. 

Wlien o"er the tombs of our torcrathcrs, 

The evening breezes passing. 

Of their serene and proud vei-dure. 

Gather the sweet perfume ; 

It carries away like the dittany. 

The souvenirs of by-gone days, 

And they sing ever in our lieait. 

J low "ood it is to be an American. 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



51 



Tlie word " dittany " used in tliis song suggests an interesting 
train of association. The plant of this name is found in the 
middle and southern states but seems not to grow east of New 
York state. It is a homely, old-fashioned, fragrant plant of the 
mint variety which is held in favor in the old style southern and 
western gardens, and grows naturall}^ in rocky woods or on 
hills ; in July and August it produces abundant flowers of a red 
or purplish tint. To find its name in use so far from the home 
of the plant, and among the descendants of the banished Aca- 
dians, suggests that it may have come back with one of those 
homeless wanderers to the eastern scenes that he loved — or it 
may have been transplanted from west to east by some followers 
of ha Salle or Tonty or some others of the devout French mis- 
sionary priests who traversed 
the west and south and cheer- 
fullv gave their lives to estab- 
lish the cross among the Indi- 
ans. The Acadian settlement 
of the Madawaska region had 
its origin in the famous and 
sorrowful removal of the Nova 
Scotia Acadians from their 
homes by the English who 
scattered them through other 
parts of the English colonies. 
It was done as a war measure, 
in 1755, to prevent the Aca- 
diansfrom assisting theFrench 
and Indians who were then at 
war with the English. Here is 
Dr. Parkman's description of 
the Acadians of that time: 
" The Acadians were a simple 
and very ignorant peasantry, 
industrious and frugal, till evil 
days came to discourage them; 
livinof aloof from the world 




HIlK THE GOOD OF HIS FEL1.I)\VS — MADAWASKA 



52 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



with little of that spirit of adventure which an easy access to 
the vast fur-bearing interior had developed in their Canadian 

kindred, having few wants and 
those of the rudest ; fishing a 
little and hunting in the win- 
ter, but chiefly cultivators of 
the soil. They made clothing 
of flax and wool of their own 
raising, hats of similar materi- 
als, and shoes or moccasins of 
moose or seal skin. They had 
cattle, sheep, hogs and horses 
in abundance. For drink they 
made cider or brewed spruce 
beer. French officials describe 
their dwellings as wretched 
wooden boxes, without orna- 
ments or conveniences and 
scarcely supplied with the 
most necessary furniture. Two 
or more families often occu- 
pied the same house ; and 
their way of life, though simple and virtuous, was by no means 
remarkable for cleanliness. Marriages were early and popula- 
tion grew apace. They were a litigious race and neighbors 
often quarreled about boundaries. 

"The whole number of Acadians removed from the province 
(Nova Scotia) was a little more than 6,000. Man}' remained 
behind ; and while some of these withdrew to Canada, Isle 
St. Jean and other 4i'^tant retreats, the rest lurked in the woods, 
or returned to their old haunts, whence they waged for several 
years a guerilla warfare against the English. Of their exiled 
countrymen one party overpowered the crew of the vessel that 
carried them, ran her ashore at the mouth of the St. John, and 
escaped. The rest were distributed among the colonies from 
Massachusetts to Georgia. Many of the exiles eventually 
reached Louisiana where their descendants now form a numerous 




..\i;i:ii-i I 1. 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 53 

and distinct population. Some, after incredible hardships, made 
their way back to Acadia, where, after the peace, they remained 
unmolested, and with those who had escaped seizure became 
the progenitors of the present Acadians now settled in various 
parts of the Maritime provinces, notably at Madawaska on the 
upper St. John and at Clare in Nova Scotia." 

It is not unlikely that the first of the Acadians who made 
their homes upon the St. John river were the deported company 
which, in Dr. Parkman's narrative, overpowered the crew of 
the vessel that was taking them away, and made their escape at 
this river's mouth. What is certainly known is that the first 
Acadian settlements on the river were at St. John and Frederic- 
ton, the principal one being at the last named point. Here the 
immigrants lived in peace until, during the war of the Revolu- 
tion, many of the loyalists banished b}^ the patriots of the 
revolted colonies, came to New Brunswick and settled about 
PVedericton. Soon, coveting their lands, they made things so 
uncomfortable for the Acadians that that much crowded-out 
people, were once more forced to "move on," going this time 
further up the St. John river to the Madawaska valley, above 
Grand Falls, past which the British war vessels could not follow 
them. This migration occurred principally in 178-t-5. In their 
new homes the Acadians were left at peace and, being a prolific 
people, they have multiplied so exceedingly that their settle- 
ments now extend for a hundred mil-es along the upper St. John 
valley on both sides of the river, and for long distances up the 
tributary streams. 

There is a great sameness and at the same time a constant 
picturesqueness in the general appearance of an Acadian com- 
munit3\ One may ride for twenty miles along a road on which 
the line of houses and farms is continuous and of which all the 
places seem to have been laid out and built on the same model. 
Fvverywhere there are repeated in unending succession the same 
fashion of little gable roofed houses, destitute of all ornamenta- 
tion, except the gay red and green barring, like lattice work, 
upon some of the doors; everywhere there are the same narrow 
farms stretching from the road or river far back over the hills 



54 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 




LEARNINti KOK THE V()IN(; MADAWASKAN 



with the pea and buckwheat fields, the onion patches and flocks 
of pasturing sheep. About the houses or met with in the road- 
way, are the characteristic troops of handsome, polite children 
who are so nearly of a size and who look so much alike. Some 

of the grown-up girls who 
peep from the doorways or 
smile and courtesy from the 
roadside as the traveler pass- 
es, are prettier than others — 
that is the only difference in 
appearance among them. Go 
into one of the houses — anj^ 
one. You will find very clean 
floors and little furniture. 
Many of the houses have but 
a single room ; others have 
two rooms — perhaps a third 
one. In the partition between 
the two principal ones a large 
opening has been left, extending from the floor half way up to 
the ceiling, so that the great stove in the middle of the house 
shall warm both rooms. There is alwa^^s a spinning wheel ; per- 
haps a loom with the unfinished web of woolen cloth or of flaxen 
crash upon it. 

If you are there at the meal hour you will be cordialh' asked 
to eat. The table is simpl}^ set. In the humbler houses the 
family eat from one large dish placed in the centre of the table. 
Every one in the household is provided with a large tin or wooden 
spoon, the bottom of which he or she carefully scrapes at the 
edge of the dish with every spoonful taken, le.st some of the pea 
soup, which is the usual provision, be spilled on the table. In 
other houses the tables are more pretentiously furnished. There 
are two standard articles in the Acadian's fare, and they always 
are well cooked and good ; these are pea soup and buckwheat 
plogues — round griddle cakes which are eaten with molasses, 
and with these two staples go, if he have it, boiled pork, either 
salt or fresh. At the Madawaska Training school, Miss Nowland, 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. o;> 

the principal, told me that every Acadian girl that came tliere 
as a pupil could make pea soup to perfection. These people 
make great use of buckwheat in their cuisine, in which it 
appears in the form of cakes and bread and mush and puddings 
— and in an Acadian settlement it might be the only grain that 
you could obtain for your horse. 

For the rest, the Acadian farmer to help out his bill of fare 
has his pigs to kill at Christmas time and lamb and mutton from 
his flock. Sometimes if he be unusually enterprising, or of a 
sporting turn, he will take the trouble to go out to kill a moose 
or deer ; or will go with a party up the Fish river in the autumn 
with nets and torches to capture white-fish by the barrel to salt 
down for winter use. He is all right in any event, for content- 
ment always goes with the pea soup and plogues ; and with all 
the mouths to be filled in this land where the new child comes 
yearly to the household with the regularity of the seasons, want 
is as little known as riches among the happy Acadians. 




GRAND ISI.F — A ST. |(>HN RIVER SCENE 



56 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 




)FF FOR THF, HAY 



Two points there are of 
pride and luxurj^ that are 
essential to the dignit}^ and 
happiness of everj' Acadian 
householder of low or high 
degree — that his children be 
gayly dressed for christening 
and confirmation, and that he 
have a horse and bugg}^ — a 
top-buggy if his means can be 
made to compass it — for the 
holiday afternoon drive with 
his wife or sweetheart. The 
Sunday that I spent in Van 
Buren several weeks ago was entertained by the long procession 
of pleasure drivers that, throughout the afternoon, passed with- 
out intermission along the main street. One would have said 
that all the Madawaska territory had turned out to drive through 
the town this day. The hor.ses were of all shades and colors, 
farm horses mostly, with now and then a roadster; the carriages, 
many of them, might, from their appearance, have come to 
Madawaska with the Fredericton emigrants ; but all who were 
in the parade, in tlie enjoyment of the ride and the blessed con- 
sciousness that the}^ were upholding their social position, were 
satisfied and happy. 

On the Maine side of the St. John the French .settlements 
extend from Caswell plantation opposite Grand Falls, for a full 
hundred miles up the river. But the principal towns and the 
most of the French population are found within a radius of 25 
miles from Madawaska, which is the northernmost town in 
Maine, and the place first settled by the Acadian emigrants from 
Fredericton. Hither, in 1784, came Jean Baptiste Cyr and 
his nine sons, who made for themselves homes at the mouth of 
the Madawaska river on what is now the Canadian bank of the 
vSt. John, but which then was claimed by Massachusetts as a 
part of the district of Maine. They were the first, or among the 
finst, of the comers in the general movement of the Acadians 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



57 



from Fredericton into the Madawaska territory. They have 
thriven and increased until to-day the Cyrs are the most numer- 
ous and influential family in the Madawaska territory, with its 
name perpetuated in the name of the flourishing plantation of 
Cyr. Among the Maine Acadians in more recent years have 
come a considerable infusion of French Canadians from across 
the border, who mostly have settled to the north of Madawaska 
township. One township on the north of Eagle Lake they have 
colonized so exclusively that it has received the name New 
Canada. They are of a t3'pe quite distinct from the Acadians, 
and by the initiated are readily distinguished from the people of 
Evangeline, by their names as nutch as by their black eyes and 
hair. The French population of the Madawaska territory, 
which comprises six towns and ten plantations besides several 
unorganized townships, is about 15,000, a number 6,000 in 
excess of the Acadian population in Nova Scotia at the time of 
its deportation and scattering in 1755. 

It is in the wagou trip from Van Buren to Fort Kent, such as 
1 made in the last days of last July, that one finds the truest and 
best scenic expressions of Acadian home life. The road lies 
along the river, with Madawaska as a half-way station. With 
me on the trip was Mr. Howe, the photographer, and our vehicle 
was a surrey driven by the Van Buren livery-stable proprietor 




ST. ISRI'NO CI M I 1 I.I 



58 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK, 



■I 



liiiuself, M(jiisieur Marcel Langlais, Acadian, who tended the 
horses and acted as our guide and interpreter. The roads were 
])erfect, tlie weather presented the divinest t^'pe of the Aroostook 
niidsu miner. We crossed Violette brook in Van Buren at seven 

o'clock in the morning ; then 
on past the convent and St. 
Bruno church and St. Bruno 
college — Van Buren was St. 
Bruno before its old Acadian 
name was usurped by the name 
of an American president — 
and soon we had left the half- 
Americanized community and 
were spinning along the long 
village street that extends 
forty-five miles to Fort Kent. 
In places as at lower and up- 
per Grand Isle, at St. David 
and Madawaska, and at lower 
and upper Frenchville the houses would draw more closely 
together toward the red-roofed church, with spire and cross, that 
stood by the wayside, with near it a merchandise store or two 
and some handsome homes of well-to-do Acadians. But practi- 
cally for all the way the small houses of the Acadian farmers 
appeared with mathematical regularity by the roadside, with the 
fences of the narrow farms leading up over the high cleared crest 
on the south — some of them extending for a mile-and-a-half 
back from the road, so the driver told us. It is a land of streams, 
the Madawaska territory', and we crossed many bridges, with 
often a buckwheat mill near them, its high overshot wheel fed 
from a narrow wooden sluiceway leading down the brookside. 
And all the way the long blue reaches of St. John river were in 
view, with its green islands, and its further bank dotted with 
farms and villages as it sloped upward into the green hills of 
Canada. 

A mile out of \'aii Buren we stayed to make a photograi)li of 
the gilded iron cross, with the figure of the bleeding heart at its 



THK laLDKD CROSS 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



59 




centre, that rears from a great boulder by the wajside. And 
down near the river bank a row of bahn-of-gilead trees marked 
the site of the old church that the cross was 
placed to commemorate. A few miies further 
on we passed another cross, an ancient, half- 
fallen, wooden structuie, which stood by the 
gateway of a stone wall enclosing a dense 
thicket, and among the young trees and under- 
growth we could dindy discern a grave-stone. 

"It is hoi}' ground,' ' the driver said ; ' ' 

n UK GA(.NON the cemetery of the old church which once 

stood there." He pointed as he spoke to an open space by the 
roadside opposite, as smooth to the eye as an}' space of the adja- 
cent fields. Whatever saint's name it had borne and what time 
had passed since its doors had stood open for worshippers only 
the church records could tell. It liad been, and had vanished 
and left no sign save the countryside tradition of its existence 
and the lonely cemetery which had received its dead. 

It was a late season, and in the fields by the wayside the Aca- 
dians were cutting hay with scythes and sometimes with a mow- 
ing machine. The growth was luxuriant, and the heads of the 
tall herdsgrass that grew to the edge of the roadway were on a 
level with our horses' backs. In relief against the verdurous 
grass tints stood the ta.s.selled blue of the tufted vetch, which the 
Acadians call le jardeau, the flaming red of the fireweed and the 
sheeted ruddiness of clover fields. Seen through the doorwa\s 
or seated in front of the houses that we passed, matrons and 
maidens were busily spinning with the small 
Norman wheels which are turned with a 
treadle by the foot, while sometimes within 
doors we could catch glimpses of the flying 
shuttle of a loom. Teams were few on the 
highway, but gathered in front of the 
church at Upper Grand Isle, where a 
funeral service was in progress, we counted 
more than fifty teams and carriages as 
we passed. Women and girls we sometimes met, knitting as 




LITTLE SIMCINNE 



60 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



they walked, and parties of children coming from school who 
greeted us, the girls with a courtesy, and the boys by taking off 
their hats. The element of French politeness is in the atmos- 
phere of Madawaska. Strangers meeting on the road bow to 
each other, and the welcome is simple and cordial at the houses 
one enters on the way. The dogs languidly watch the traveler 
from the dooryards, not offering to bark at his heels, and the 
pigs and the geese in the pastures continue their avocations as 
he passes, regarding his presence with well-bred indifference. 
It is ou\y when the crops have been gathered, and they have 
been turned out to range at large, that the pigs lapse from their 
good breeding and vex the traveller's soul by occupying the 
roadway and tripping him and his horse by unexpected sorties 
when he attempts to clear the way. 

Common schools occur with 
frequency along every Mada- 
waska roadwa}', and it is a 
perpetual man-el how so many 
pupils can be gathered in such 
tiny boxes of houses. The 
teachers, generally young 
women and Acadians, con- 
duct the recitations wholly in 
the English language. The 
school at St. David we found 
out was taught by Catherine 
Albert and Annie L,ebrun — 
the name of the first teacher is 
Acadian, that of the second, 
Canadian French — but all the 
other schools that we visited 
were taught by Acadian teach- 
ers. In no New England rural 
tract similar in extent and 
population are the connnon schools more numerous, the ratio of 
attendance greater, or the pupils apter to learn, than in the 
Maine Acadia. We staved to visit several of the schools in our 




.A1'.K1I:K AM) 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



61 



progress through the Madawaska territory with the same expe- 
rience in all. At our entrance the scholars all would rise to 
their feet and remain standing while the smiling, fair-faced 
teacher bade us welcome. Usually there was a bouquet beside 
the school-globe on the table and often potted flowers in the 
windows. Indeed the love of flowers seems general among the 
Madawaska French, for we saw beautiful varieties filling the 
windows of manv of the farmhouses whatever, wav we took. 




MOIII'KN 



From Madawaska town at the head of the great northward 
bend of the river St. John, where we stayed for dinner, we jour- 
neyed through lower Frenchville, and upper Frenchville with 
its great church and pretty houses and convent of Saint Rosaire 
to Fort Kent where we arrived before nightfall. Here are sev- 
eral fine houses and grounds near the old barrack that has been 
transformed into the hotel Dickey. Near the river, on the level 
plateau that includes the famous blockhouse, is the handsome 
residence of Vincent M. Theriault, Esq., a wealthy land propri- 
etor who is one of the leading lawyers in the Madawaska terri- 
tory. He is of Acadian descent, and his wife was the beautiful 
Marguerite Elise Cyr of the family so prominent in all the annals 
of the Madawaska territory. From my visit to his place I 
])rought pictures of his house and family which represent the 
most cultured phase of Acadian home life ; also I took from 
Fort Kent with me a photograph of the house and grounds of 



€2 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



Mr. Charles Dickey, .son of the Hon. William Dickey, " Duke of 
Fort Kent," and father of the Madawaska Training vSchool, who 
for forty-four years represented his French-American constitu- 
■ency in the Maine legi.slature, and vigilanth' guarded their 
rights and secured for them their lawful privileges. 

We returned to Van Buren on the second day of our trip by 
wa}' of Saint Agatha, the pro.sperous French-American town at 
the head of Long lake, five miles south of F'renchville. The 
twenty-mile drive to St. Agatha, over the hills, revealed the 
same fashion of houses and farming that we had seen in the 
river valley, but more and more primitive. The farm-hou.ses 
still were ever in view, b}' the roadside and in the far distance, 
and the verdurous landscape unfolded itself as we advanced in 
every shade of field and forest green. We pau.sed at the house 
of Denis Roy, Acadian — I 
write the name as his wife, 
whose maiden name was Marie 
Caron, spelled it for me — but 
iirst she tried to Americanize 
the surname as " King," a 
foible connnon to the Acadian 
and Canadian French alike. 
It was the hight of the haying 
season and three buxom young 
wives and their stalwart young 
husbands, to say nothing of 
some odd boys and girls, all 
were taking their ease in the 
farmhou.se shade at nine o'clock in the morning while the tall 
herdsgra.ss, over-ripe, awaited the cutting in the fields around. 
There is but little of the modern hurry call in life in Mada- 
waska, which is perhaps the principal reason that the Acadians 
lead long and happ}- lives. 

After our stop at the house of Denis Roy two especial experi- 
ences marked our way over the route to. St. Agatha. The firsi 
was the visit to the school of pretty, laughing Kmma Raymond, 
Acadian, of course, of whom, with her scholars grouped about 




-MK. 1 IIKKIAILT ANU Wll-li 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



63 




her, we took away a picture ; the second was the view we cap- 
lured of the log-house and outbuildings, of the type of the earli- 
est settlers' places, and of a 
French Canadian girl making 
plogues. There was a primi- 
tive little fireplace outside the 
house, built of loose stones, with 
a piece of sheet iron across them, 
which served as griddle. The 
batter of buckwheat meal and 
water was in a little wooden tub, 
and she spread it upon the grid- 
dle with a wooden paddle, turn- 
ing the cakes with the same 
implement. They were of the 
size of an ordinary dinner plate, 
and as fast as they were cooked 
were laid, layer upon layer, on 
a wooden plate. Her movements 

were watched with eager interest, by a flock of hungry hens 

which were unceasing in their 

endeavors to capture the 

])logues, and which were quite 

as vigilantly watched and 

' ' shooed ' ' away by a bevy of 

the cook's equally hungry 

young brothers and sistens. 

A long stretch of road between 

flax-fields, flowering purple, 

l)rought us to St. Agatha with 

its handsome church and 

priest's house and wide blue 

reaches of Long lake extend- 
ing .southward from the town. 

Here Father Henri Gory, the 

parish priest, gave us a cordial 

welcome, in which he was 



THERE AKE CiOOD TIMES AMCING THE ACAUIA> 




INTELLIGENT GIRLS OF OUU NORTHLAND 



64 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



joined by his visitor, the Rev. LeP.Ch. L,eFlem, assistant priest 
of St. Bruno church. Van Buren. One might linger long in 
description of this pleasing abode, the excellent dinner served 
in which such mutton was served as rarel}- can be matched in 
any of the great city markets, with the rare cheese from the Oka 
trappist monastery near Quebec for the dessert, and company 
which was better than the viands ; and of the after dinner cigars 
smoked on the veranda watching the fishhawks as they circled 
in pairs or singly above the lake. But we had the long trip yet 
to make to Van Buren and unwillingly we left St. Agatha, its 
church and flax-fields and its benign and hospitable priests. 




1 m 1111 Kl H 111- -il . AI.A IH A 




CHAPTER VII. 

FROM OVER THE SEA. NEW SWEDEN — THE FRUITAGE OF A 
GREAT COLONIZATION IDEA. 

O make the tour of Aroostook couiit>- without visit- 
ing- New Sweden, would be to leave out one of 
the most important and interesting features in the 
county and in Maine. It is not merely the beauty 
of the landscape, the thrift)- farms and the pictur- 
esque spectacle of Scandinavian folk life transplanted into this 
country which constitute the interest of the community to the 
visitor. With these features stands the fact that this Swedish 
settlement is the only successful agricultural colony founded with 
foreigners from over ocean in New England since the Revoli:- 
tionary war. 

The results of its establishment have been to add to Aroostook 
county 2,000 Swedes, all industrious and moral and thrifty, who 
have turned forest into farms and made the. wilderness to blos- 
som as the rose. It has distributed as many more of the same 
people throughout the state beyond Aroostook. And, by turn- 
ing the current of immigration, it has given New England 20,000 
of the same desirable population — and all these results evidently 
are but the beginning of far-reaching and greater ones to come. 
No public undertaking, until the building of the Bangor & 
Aroostook railroad made all other sources of development seem 
small by comparison, has done so much industrially^for Aroos- 
took county and the state as the founding of this Swedish colony, 
thirty-two 3-ears ago, in the wilds of eastern Maine. 

I got far-away views of the rolling hills and stately groves of 
Stockholm and New Sweden off to the west of the track in com- 
ing southward from Van Buren. That I went on to Caribou 



66 



IX FAIR AKOOSTOOK. 



before visiting tlie vSwedisli settlements proved most fortunate 
for my ultimate visit for there I met the Hon. William Widgery 
Thomas, United States minister to Sweden, who was on his 
return from a visit to this colony which he founded. From him 
I got many interesting particulars concerning it. But it was 
only when I went to Stockholm and New vSweden and saw the 
farms with their comfortable houses, great barns, broad fields 
and fruitful orchards, with the general air of smiling prosperity 
that pervaded all, that I fully could realize the success that had 
attended the scheme of vSwedish colonization in Aroostook. 




It was the un])leasant fact, revealed by the census of 1870, 
that the po^oulation of Maine was diminishing that led to the 
founding of the Swedish colony in Aroostook county. It was 
found that while in the ten years previous the United States had 
gained more than 7,r)00,000 in population, the state of Maine 
had 1,:}64 fewer inhabitants than in 1860. To remedy this state 
of things the Maine legislature took the matter in hand. A 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 67 

board of immigration was established. William Widgery 
Thomas was appointed commissioner of immigration and a 
township was assigned for the settlement of the immigrants that 
he proposed to bring from Sweden. 

As a result of this action a colony of twenty-two men, eleven 
women and eighteen children, in charge of Mr. Thomas, sailed 
from Gothenburg, on June 25, 1870, to make new homes in 
Maine. The commissioner was authorized to "take the Swedes 
into our northern forests, locate them on Township Number 15, 
Range 3, west of the east line of the state, give every head of 
a family one hundred acres of woodland for a farm, and do what- 
ever else might be necessary to root this Swedish colony firmly 
in the soil of Maine." The company arrived at Halifax on July 
13, crossed the peninsula of Nova Scotia and over the Bay of 
Fund}' to St. John, ascended the river by steamer and flat-boats 
to Tobique Landing, and thence traveled by wagon to their des- 
tination at the township whicli Mr. Thomas baptized New 
Sweden. 

Here is his description of the township: "New Sweden lies 
in latitude 47 degrees north, about the same latitude as the city 
of Quebec. There are few better towns in Maine for agricultural 
purposes. On every hand the land rolls up into gentle hard 
wood ridges, covered with a stately growth of maple, birch, 
beech and ash. In every valley between these ridges flows a 
brook, and along its banks grow the spruce, fir and cedar. The 
soil is a rich, light loam, overlying a hard layer of clay, which 
in turn rests upon a ledge of rotten slate, with perpendicular 
rift. The ledge seldom crops out, and the land is remarkably 
free from stones." In preparation for the coming of the settlers 
a chopping of five acres had been made on each of the 100-acre 
lots assigned them, and an 18 by 26 foot log cabin built and 
furnished with a cooking stove. This was the sole gratuitous 
aid given by the state to the Swedish settlers who had paid their 
own passage from Sweden. They came with scanty equipment, 
having not even so much as chairs in the way of furniture; and 
the onlv animals taken into the woods by the colony were two 



68 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 




kittens, picked up by Swedish children on the ilrive in from 
Tobique. 

It was the conimunit}- planted under such conditions that I 
came to visit on an afternoon soon after my interview with Mr. 
Thomas; and I Vjnre a note from him to the Rev. Olof P. Foge- 

lin. pastor of the Congrega- 
tional church there, who was 
to be my guide and referee 
during the time I was to spend 
in New Sweden. Instead of 
taking the usual, and gener- 
ally preferable route, and 
traveling the eight miles by 
team from Caribou, I chose, 
on account of rain and muddy 
roads, to go by rail to Jemt- 
land, where the stage, I was 
informed, would take me to 
Peterson's, the one hotel in 
all the vSwedish settlements. 
Alighting from the train at Jemtland station — Jemtland is the 
northern part of New Sweden, as Nelson is the southern part — 
I found the stage to be a one-seated wagon, driven by a small 
boy who spoke very imperfect English. Fortunately I was the 
only passenger, so there was room for all. We bumped and 
splashed for some miles over a road that led westward through 
a spruce and cedar swamp and then, at the base of the hills that 
rolled up ahead, came to a little settlement composed of a group 
of mills, two stores and several dwelling houses. The boy 
stopped the team at one of the .stores and handed out the mail 
bags to an old man who came to take them. 
" Is this Jemtland? " I asked the boy. 
"Yes," he answered, nodding. 

I got out of the wagon and went into the store. The old man 
had taken the mail bags into a rear compartment and came back 
to the front. I asked him where Peterson's hotel was. He 
looked at me cautiously. 



SII'KIIV (HII.DHHN 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



69 



" It is a poor place," he said. 

"All right, I'll take a look at it, anyhow," I answered. 
" Would you mind showing me where it is?" 

He led the way to where, a little distance in the rear of the 
store, there was a story and a half cottage, and entering, showed 
me some sleeping rooms. The whole place looked tidy and 
comfortable. 

"Are you Mr. Peterson ?" I asked. 

"Yaw," he answered. 

But I did not stay at Peterson's after all. My letter signed 
by Mr. Thomas, "Father Thomas" the New Sweden people all 
call him — was an "open sesame" to the hospitality of the com- 
numity. Mr. Jacob Hedman, storekeeper, mill owner, postmas- 
ter and principal business man generall}- in Jemtland, volun- 
teered to drive me in his carriage over to Mr. Fogelin's home, 
five miles awav. 




IF A MAINK-.SWEDEN HOME 



70 IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 

But first we must see Stockholm, and we drove northward 
two miles along a ridge with fine farms on either hand. All 
was change from Acadia which I had left so recently — yet 
strangely enough, I was among a people of the same strain of 
blood as those whom I had left in the Aladawaska territor\', for 
both were of Scandinavian origin : the Acadians of Norman- 
French stock being separated from the Swedes le.ss in consan- 
guinity than by the influence of a thousand j^ears' residence in 
France and America. Here the people whom I met or saw in 
the fields and houses, were larger of frame and more stalwart 
than the Madawaskans ; the men brown-bearded and tall ; the 
women and children i^londe-haired and fair of face ; and all tak- 
ing life more seriously than do the light-hearted Acadians. 
There was everywhere a visible prosperity. At one house 
where we stayed to call, the mistress of the house was attired in 
a black, well-fitting gown as au}'^ lady in a town might be who 
was prepared to receive visitors in the afternoon. Her two 
daughters of 18 and 14 years presently came into the room — I 
wish I could remember their names, though I am sorry to say, 
they were Americanized — and while a trifle timid in the presence 
of a stranger, they carried themselves quite as becomingl}' as 
anj^ well trained American girls might. There was a piano, and 
the elder girl, to her own accompaniment, sang some Swedish 
hymns very sweetlv. Both of the girls spoke perfect English 
with only a little of the crisp vSwedish enunciation, and softer 
voices, to distinguish their accent trom that of the average edu- 
cated American girl. We found things more farm-like at other 
places where we called, but everywhere there was neatness and 
plenty and comfort. The fine horses that we met on the road, 
the blooded stock that fed in the pastures — all these things were 
a great transformation from the time a quarter of a century ago 
when the early settlers were living in log huts, with furniture of 
their own making, and were doing their plowing and hauling 
with a single gteer or cow harnessed with ropes. 

From Stockholm we drove five miles over hills to the house of 
Mr. Fogelin in New Sweden — a farmhouse set against a hillside 



IX I-.\IK .\K()OSTO()K. 71 

with woods above that ran from the yard up to the top of the 
eminence. I deliv'ered my letter which was sufficient to secure 
me a cordial welcome. 

I was pressed to stay all night and it was arranged that I 
should do this and that Mr. Fogelin should drive me through 
New vSweden to the railroad station in the morning, showing me 
the town as we went. There is nothing of the austerity of the 
oldtime Calvinistic minister in this big, hearty, unaffectedly 
pious man who on his farm, like St. Paul with his tentmakers' 
tools, works as well as prays. His family is large, and from the 
circumstances attending his vocation, the duties of entertaining 
visitors oftentimes falls heavily on him and his stout and comely 
wife, l)Ut nothing can disturb the cheerfulness of this excellent 
and jolly couple. At supper, in accordance with old Swedish 
custom, the farm help and all the children sat at the table, and 
when the meal was over, Mr. Fogelin told me many things of 
New Sweden, and of his parish work as a Congregational minis- 
ter there. 

New Sweden is in Irulli a conununity of church-goers. Nearly 
every adult Swede is a church member, and nearly every one in 
the settlements, old and young, attends public religious services 
every Sunday the whole year round. The pervading atmos- 
phere of life in New Sweden is temperate, industrious and relig- 
ious, and there never has been a rum shop in the settlement. 
That the Swedes are a healthy and prolific race is shown by the 
fact that from the date of settlement of New Sweden until now 
the births have outnumbered the deaths in the ratio of 8.43 to 1, 
which is a good showing even in Aroostook. As for their 
industrv. entering as they did an unbroken forest scarcely any 
one of the Swedes has cleared less than HO acres, most have 
cleared from 30 to 50 acres, while a few who have acquired more 
than one lot have 100-acre clearings. In the aggregate these 
Swedes have cleared and put into grass and crops more than 
8,000 acres. In 1894 the value of their farm products was- 
$173,730; of their factories and mills, ^.(J9,070; and the value of 
their buildings, clearings, tools and stock, $528,89;"). To-day 
these values, at a very moderate estimate, must have tloubled. 



72 



IX FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



And all these values have been created where not the worth of a 
dollar was produced 32 3'ears ago. 

For most of these figures I am indebted to Mr. Thomas. But 
they crystallize the substance of my conversation with Mr. Foge- 
lin. After our talk came prayers, an early bedtime and then in 
the morning after a breakfast in which the cream, butter, fresh 
eggs and berries attested the productiveness of his farm, the 
start was made with Mr. Fogelin in an open wagon, to drive 
through New Sweden on the way to the station. In this morn- 
ing trip there was the same panoramic succession of well tilled 

farms, good houses, great barns and 
orchards that I had seen in my 
drive of the day before. And with 
the farms appeared the schoolhouse. 
There are seven schoolhouses now 
in the town, which is a great im- 
provement on the time, a quarter 
of a century ago, when some of the 
children came to the single school 
five miles through the woods, slip- 
ping over the snow on skidor or 
Swedish snowshoes. They still use 
the skidor in the heav}' winter 
snows, but there are no such dis- 
tances now to travel to the school- 
house as there were then. We did 
not visit an\- of the mills — but there 
are grist and lumber and starch mills in the town ; and, above 
all, shingle mills where shingles are sawed out by machiner\' 
instead of being shaved into shape by hand as they were in the 
early days of the settlement. The Swedes made famous shaved 
shingles and many of them, then, as the\- well might, when 
bundles of shingles were their only currenc_v with which to Imy 
goods of the American traders. 

The village of New Sweden, with house;? and stores in appear- 
ance quite like those of most other Aroostook villages of its size, 
runs largely to churches, of which there are four — a Baptist, a 




A I.ITTI.E SWEDK 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 73 

Coiigregationalist, an Advent and a Lutheran church. A fea- 
ture of ever}' church, suggestive of the distances the people 
have to travel to attend divine worship, and also of their care 
for dumb animals, is the great horse shed in its rear — a long, 
low, frame stable in which, even in the coldest days of winter, 
the horses stand warm and comfortable in the long double row 
of stalls, while their masters worship within the church. 

"That is the capitol," said Mr. Fogelin, pointing to a build- 
ing that stood at the cross-roads in the center of the village. It 
was a two-story, frame building, about 45 feet long by 30 feet 
wide. "It is the oldest public building in New Sweden. It 
was built in the first year of the colony as a sort of general 
headquarters and it has served since for many purposes — as 
church, schoolhouse, town house and general meeting place for 
the colony. It used to have a tower but that went long ago." 

It is the central point, this old building, of the Swedish colon- 
ization in Aroostook, standing as it does in the fifty-acre lot 
reserved for public uses in the precise center of the original settle- 
ment. Since its building the little band of 50 Swedes who 
dwelt around it has become a population of 867 in New Sweden, 
and has spread in still greater numbers beyond its borders into 
the townships of Stockholm and Westmanland, organized as 
plantations by Swedes, and the adjacent parts of Woodland, 
Caribou and Perham, so that there is now a compact settlement 
of at least 1800 Swedes about the "capitol." Beyond these 
are the Swedish 'artisans and skilled workmen drawn to Maine 
b}^ New Sweden who have found work in the slate quarries 
of Piscataquis county, in the great tanneries and sawmills of 
Penobscot and in stores and workshops of the towns and cities 
of Maine. "Since the founding of the colony," I am quoting 
from Mr. Thomas, "the Swedish girls have ever furnished 
needed and valuable help in our families in all sections of the 
state. Some Swedish immigrants who came to us in independent 
circumstances purchased improved farms in Aroostook county ; 
while many Swedes with less means, settled on abandoned farms 
in Cumberland, York and our other older counties. These 
deserted homesteads have been placed by the vSwedes in a high 



74 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



state of cultixation : indeed vSwedish ininiigratioii is proving to 
be the happ>- solution of tlie ' abandoned farms' question in 
Maine." 

F"e\v immigrants tliat come from over sea a.ssimilate themselves 
so readil> witli American ways as do the Swedes, and the people 

of New Sweden are no excep- 
tion. Besides this the stern 
necessities of the situation 
during the first years of the 
colonization, compelling rigid 
economy and toil almost un- 
ceasing under new conditions, 
tended to bring old country- 
customs into disuse.. The lan- 
guage, the wooden shoes, the 
skidor, or snow skates, the 
heavy silver spoons and some 
odd bits of silver or wooden 
ware brought from Sweden 
were the chief survivals in 
their daily life of the things 
and customs of the land they 
had quitted. But as their 
means increased and the fear 
of failure and famine pa.ssed 
the settlers found time to re- 
new some of their old customs 
ofv pleasure taking. In their 
greater prosperity' they now 
were able to entertain the visitors with cake and coffee, without 
whicli, to the vSwedish mind, hospitality seems a barren form. 
The}- ne\-er had l)een so poor but that when Christmas came the 
sheaf of oats was put out on a pole for the birds, and the domes- 
tic animals got an extra allowance of feed; but now they could 
observe the da> for themselves. They looked on approvingly 
while the >-oung people celebrated the day with dancing, ring 
games and l)lind-man's buff and other harmless sports, the girls 



^^IPF ^Mk 


> 


m igf 


^ 


^^^HbK Mir «^H 


f 


^^^^MK^^^ 


^^^^B'^V^^^H 


■ '^""-J 


^- 



IN DHI.NAKA II 



I N V A IK A K ( )( ).STOO K , 



/» 



often \vearin,y; lor the occasion, some jJ'old or sil\-er ornament 
that at other times was jealously hoarded as an heirloom. But 
even in these nierrymeetino^s the deep religious nature of the 
Scandinavian asserted itself for they were preceded !>>■ church 
service and often were begun or ended with prayer. And New 
Year's among the Swedes is observed wholh' as a religious day. 
A pretty winter custom prevails among the New Sweden 
children, which is the l)urningof the vSno Lykta, the snow light. 
A high conical house made of loosely packed snowballs is built, 
and a lighted candle placed within it causes the structure to 
glow in the night time with a strong and mellow radiance. With 
these snow lights the children in the early evening exchange 
signals l)etween houses from hill to hill, and the effect of these 
sotth- luminous beacons crowning the hilltops is strikingly beau- 
tiful. The youths and maidens watch and help the children, 
often l)areheade(l and barehaniled, while their elders stand in 
the doorway to enjo\- the spectacle — for the cold of an Aroostook 




iHi-: ^tlT)■■^^lMl•K fi>ii\a1- — m:s\ swi'Dkn 



76 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



winter has little dread for people wlio traveled southward 
through 14 degrees of latitude to come from Stockholm, in 
Sweden, to their American homes. The boys welcome spring, 




I HI-: Ni:\V SWEDEN HANI) 



on the eve of Ma\- 1, b\- bonfires built on the hilltops. Midsum- 
mer, the da}' of which is June 22, is, next to Christmas, the 
most merr}' festival. There are green boughs and festoons of 
evergreens and wild flowers al)Out the farmhouse verandas and 
gateways in joy of the day, and a public celebration with music 
and song and oratory and a collation is a customary feature of 
the occasion. In all the joyousness of these festivals the elderly 
people are sharers, for the fondness of the old for the young is a 
marked and pleasing trait of the Swedish character. 

My ride with Mr. Fogelin through New Sweden, enlivened 
by his apt descriptions of the scenes we passed, was drawing to 
an end. We were be}'ond the village and before us the high 
lands dropped into the lower le\-els where the road for the rest 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 77 

of the way to the station led through a cedar swamp. At a 
farmhouse by the roadside a farmer, driving with his famih^ 
to town, had halted his team to make a neighborly call. 
While their elders talked within doors the young people had 
gone out into the orchard and, grouped beneath the trees, chat- 
ting and laughing, were seven or eight girls whose ages 
would range from 14 to IS years. The apple blossoms were on 
the trees, and the girls" complexions — that Swedish clear, blonde 
tint that the sun caiuiot burn — lost nothing by the contrast. Fine 
of form, full of health and strength and animation, and happ}' in 
the sheer delight of living, with white teeth flashing as they 
laughed, they made a charming tableau — and I felt that this 
flower scene that closed m\' visit to New Sweden was best of all. 

Forth the pilgrim eager started 

Fi-oin the settled southern country, 

Set his steps toward the northward, 

To the region of Aroostook ; 

'!"<) the land ot farm? and woodland. 

Oats and hay and big potatoes. 

Horses, sheep and Durham cattle. 

Here tlie tields are smooth and spreading, 

And the homes are rich and happ}' : 

Here the people, well contented, 

Feel themselves not small potatoes; 

Living in the biggest county 

Of the state, and eke New England ; 

Biggest and the most productive. 

Here the spruce and pine trees tower. 

And the cedar spreads its fragrance: 

Beauty flashes from the waters 

Of the rivers, lakes aud lakelets; 

Majesty eniolds the forests, 

Aud the inedian-al customs 

Tvinger in Acadian hamlets 

Wliere bright-eyed Evangeline, 

Jeanne, Aimee and fair Delphine 

Gossip at their spinning wlieels, 

\Vhile spun flax grows on the reels. 

— The Aroostook Pihjrim, Canto 1. 




CHAPTER VIII. 

AGRICULTURK — THE BACKBONE OF AROOSTOOK PROSPERITY. 
COMING TOWNS OF THE COUNTY. i/EXVOI. 

^(I^N the farniiiii,^ ])elt of Aroostook there are six lead- 
ing towns, or, I might better say, in that part where 
the farming possibilities of the county haYe been 
deYeloped, for eYerywhere in its wooded uplands 
is the soil of rich yellow-brown loam, aboYe the 
bed of porous limestone, that has made the name Aroostook the 
synonym of agricultural producti\-eness. These towns, named 
with their populations, are Van Buren, 1878 ; Limestone, 1131 ; 
Carilxni, 4758 ; Fort Fairfield, 4181 ; Presque Isle, 3804 : 
Houlton, 4686 ; and all are connected with Bangor and the west 
by the lines of the Bangor & Aroostook railroad. Fort Kent, 
with its 2,528 inhabitants, has an Acadian population within 
and about it which carries agriculture scarcely beyond the point 
of supplying products for home consumption. 

Houlton, the oldest and handsomest of these towns, has some 
line houses and the Ricker Classical institute, an admirable 
seminary ; but all haYe a westernism of character hard to match 
in any state east of the Mississippi riYcr. There is wealth and 
liberality and public spirit in all, but, except Houlton, the towns 
seem to haYe been rushed along so fast through the growth of 
business that they haYe not had time or leisure to stop and set- 
tle themselYCS into shape, and grow beautiful. All are thriYing ; 
all haYe the telephone and boards-of-trade ; all haYe good hotels ; 
and those that liaYC not already got the electric lights and water- 
works are hustling toward that end with all possible speed. 



80 IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 

The development of Van Buren has features that differ char- 
acteristically from those of the other towns named, for, instead of 
growing from the wilderness, its modern expansion is founded 
upon the old and conserv^ative civilization of the Acadian French, 
who founded the town as St. Bruno more than a hundred 3'ears 
ago. But the irrepressible energy of the presiding genius of the 
place, the progressive, the energetic, the genial Peter Charles 
Keegan, is equal to the overcoming of all obstacles, and at the 
time of n\\ visit to Van Buren he was closing the arrangements 
with a company for the building of waterworks in the town. 

It is not ni}' purpose to describe the towns in detail. In Van 
Buren the great lumber mills and the mercantile trade of a wide 
rural district constitute the chief industries. In the other towns 
are starch and lumber mills, but the impetus that drives their 
business comes from the inpouring of the crops of Aroostook. 

In its present state of development the productive agricultural 
belt of Aroostook is a strip from six to twelve miles wide, extend- 
ing from Houlton to Stockholm, a distance of about 75 miles, 
and bisected, lengthwise, by the Bangor & Aroostook railroad. 
While there is land equally fertile in every part of the county, 
this narrow strip is the part that has been rendered productive, 
and from it comes substantially all of those enormous 3'ields of 
wheat, potatoes, oats and ha}' that already have placed Aroos- 
took in the foremost rank of agricultural counties in the United 
States. Practically all this productive strip has been hewn from 
the forest within the last 30 years, but from its appearance it 
might have been cultivated for centuries, so smooth and settled 
does the face of nature appear. 

There are three towns. Fort Fairfield, Caribou and Presque 
Isle, that may be termed the garden towns of Aroostook. All 
are in the Aroo.stook River valley, Fort Fairfield with its old 
blockhouse built in 1839 to defend it from invasion, lies upon the 
frontier, and from the hilltops of the town one may look forth 
upon the slopes and valleys of New Brunswick. Above it on 
the river are Caribou and Presque Lsle. Such a picture of pas- 
toral peace and plenty as these townships present I believe is not 
surpassed in all the world. Along the river teeming with logs 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



81 



on the \va>' to tht lumber mills, are reaches of intervale as level 
as a table. From the high i)anks that rise from river or inter- 
vale stretches back the valle\-, with slope behind slope rolling 
upward from it in those low, rounded contours that are t^-pical 
of the Aroostook landscape. The open lands are as smooth and 
even as a laid carpet: the forest reaches of towering hardwood 
trees stand against the sky like groves. When I was there in 
Mav the tree-tints were pale green, the earth-carj^et was soft 
1)rown where the potatoes had l)een planted and the grain sown 
and rolled. In July the whole land is a riot of green. The 
woods foliage has deepened in tone: the wa\-ing fields ol wheat 
and oats display a thousand \erdurous tints as the tall stalks 
sway in the breeze ; already the clo\er aftermath is hiding the 
stubble of the early-mown hayfields. Only in the potato fields, 
which now are a-l)loom in tints of white and yellow, can the 
l)rown earth still be seen between the rows; but next month, 
when the grain fields turn golden for the reaping, the potato 
vines, then at the height of their growth, will have changed the 
face of the ground into the aspect of long, s>'mmetrical ridges of 
green. 

"Let vour pen gallop; write everytliing good ycni please. 
You can't overdo Aroo.stook," said a very matter-of-fact Bangor 
frientl to me on learning that I intended to visit New England's 
Garden. 




POTATOES FOK THK MIMTONS — MILLIONS IiiK 'IHF: GKOWl 



82 



IX FAIR AROOSTOOK. 




He knew whereof he spoke, and I, seeing, now l)elieve. 
There is an opulence, a luxuriant energy in nature here that 
seems to he iniparteti to everything that moves or grows. The 
people that have grown up here are fine, sturd>- t>pes of human- 
ity, energetic, open-hearted, frank and cordial of manner. 
Wages are higher m Aroostook than anywhere else in New 
England, and the farmer and the man who works for day's 

wages alike live better and have more 
comforts and luxuries than men in the 
same spheres have almost anywhere 
else. There is a ])ropert3- to the lime- 
stone soil that is the element of growth 
and fine qualit}' in vegetation, and not 
merely does it respond to the planting 
with i)lentiful har\-ests hut the Aroos- 
took oats and ha\- and wheat, like the 
potatoes, from their excellence all 
command a special value in the 

I'll 1,1' I II \ KI IS KKI'I.AN ' 

markets of the nation. Horses and 
cattle attain an unusual size anil sleekness, and in the growing 
of hunhs and fine nuitton sheep Aroostook is not surpassed by 
any state of the Union. 

Here are my notes of two farms that I \'isited in the Aroostook 
valley. Alfred Bishop's farm at Fort Fairfield contains :K)() 
acres, and I visited his oO-acre potato field. He raised 4000 
barrels of marketable ])otatoes last year, besides (iOO l)arrels of 
inferior ])otatoes that were sent, to the starch factory ; his crops 
included 2.1 tons of ha\-, 200 bushels of wheat, and SOO bushels 
of oats. 

E. E. Ha\(len of Presqtie Isle; his farm of GOO acres includes 
a lOO-acre hardwood lot. He has 225 acres under cultivation, 
apportioned this year as follows : Sixty-two acres potatoes, 50 
acres grain, .'^0 acres pasture, 83 acres hay. He raised last }ear 
7000 barrels of potatoes, and he wintered 52 cattle, 14 houses, 
and 45 sheep. His sheep are of the Cotswold variet}', kept for 
the production of Uunbs and mutton, but he gets from them also 
an average shearing of eight or nine ])ounds of wool apiece. 



IX FAIR AROOSTOOK. 88 

wortli l(i cents a ])ouiul. He lias 25 inilk-i;iving Holsteiii cows, 
and sells cream to the valne of from $100 to #125 per month. 
His income last year from the sale of potatoes, oats and hay, 
was $14,680. 

It was at Houlton, in May, that I saw the ])lanting of ]iota- 
toes. Coming eastward from Ashland Junction I had been 
impressed with the farms with their great tillage fields that 
spread broader and broader as I approached Aroostook's county 
town, and on the da^- of my arrival I accepted gladly an invita- 
tion from Mr. William Martin to drive out to the farm of John 
Watson, merchant and starch manufacturer, a mile and a half 
from the village. Houlton is a handsome town even for New 
Kngland, with its trees, fine residences, ])ublic buildings and 
the beautiful Meduxnekeag river that winds through the heart 
of the township. Be\ond the village houses the country 0))ened 
out into the typical Aroostook laiulscape of farms, with small 
houses, great barns and vast stretches of open, cultivated coun- 
try, which at this season was alive with men and horses engaged 
in " ])utting in the crops." Arri\-eil at the farm we passed 
along a lane, through broad fields .sown with oats and wheat, to 
the nearest potato field, which was 85 acres in extent. 

Here his men were planting pototoes — witli a machine, of 
course, for from the time the seed potatoes are cut for planting 
until the crop is dug all the work in the field is done by machin- 
ery. The land has been })loughed and then harrowed smooth ; 
the planting machine was about four feet long, with a magazine 
of commercial fertilizer in front, and one of seed potatoes in the 
rear; a man on the seat in front drove the horses and a boy on 
the seat behind kept the cylinder clear through which the pota- 
toes found their way, one by one, to the furrow. Tiie machine, 
as the horses drew it steadily along, made the furrow, dropped 
a portion of fertilizer in it, covered it with earth, dropj)ed a seed 
potato upon the earth above the fertilizer and covered it, and 
repeated this process at intervals of a foot to the end of the row. 
The field after the planting appeared as smooth almost as before, 
with the planted rows indicated l)y tiuv ridges 80 inches apart. 



S4 IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 

I 1 the course of three or four weeks tlie potatoes have rooted 
ami tlie huddiiig vines have appeared at tlie surface, niarkiu"' 
the field in dotted Hues of tureen. Then a ciiltiv^ator is run 
between tlie rows to loosen the soil, and the hoeing machine fol- 
lows which makes a hill above each ])Otato-shoot, burying it to a 
depth of four or five inches. This covering of the vines, which 
is done to cause the potatoes to root strongly, is a wrinkle bor- 
rowed possil)l\' from the Acadian French who practice it. About 
the first of July, wlien the i)otato tops have pushed through the 
earth abo\-e them, the potatoes again are hoetl and hilled and 
this time the tops are not covered with earth. The hill is now 
about eight or ten inches high, and as many inches in length 
and breadth, and it serves the two-fold purpose of holding the 
growing tubers above all wet and dampness, which would rot 
them, and of affording a bed sufficientl\- large for all to cuddle 
and grow in without crowding (jue another from under their 
earlii coverlet into the sunlight which would turn them green. 
This second hoeing concludes the tillage of the crop. 

For the refection of the jjotato bug, who appears in the fields 
punctuallv in his season, a solution of paris green must be pre- 
pared with which the ])otato vines are sprayed, once in July and 
once in August, which in ordinar\- weather is sufficient provision 
for his visit. As the color of paris green is much the same as 
that of the vines, the bug does not perceive the addition, and 
attacks them cheerfully, Init does not get far along in his feast 
before he falls to the ground to fertilize with his remains the 
plant he sought to tlestrow 

More insidiously tleadlx- to the growing potato vines is the 
fungus, which comes in stillness and unseen, like the thief in 
the night, and blights the field as if in a breath. This enemy 
can make his attack only in certain conditions of the atmosphere. 
So long as tlie weather is clear and dry the vines are safe ; but 
when the day turns overcast and humid, within certain degrees 
of teuiperature, the fungus, beginning at some one point, will 
sweep over a .")0-acre potato field in two da,ys. At its fatal touch 
the i)lant blackens and dies outright or lingers through the 
season in a teehle stru*;gle lor existence tli<it leaves no eiiergv 



IN FAIR AKCJOSTOOK. 



85 



available for the devel()i)nienl of the tul)ers. Wlien once the 
fungus appears in a lieUl there is no time then to stem its 
advance and the crop is lost : the only safety from its attacks is 
to antici})ate them 1)\- sjtraxing the vines four or five times in 
the season with the Bordeaux mixture, a solution of sulphate of 
copper and carbonate of lime in equal parts, which, if 
thoroughl\- done, will keep the fungus from the field. The 
spraying is i)erformed with an atomizing machine, and now the 
inventive genius of Aroostook is exercised upon the prol)lem 
of the best way to condiine paris green and the fungicitle .solu- 
tion into one mixture wiiich ma\' be successfull\' applied to the 
vines in a single operation. 




I Fl A I MA K I 1 )ii: >i:. 



With the coming of vSeptember the danger from enemies of the 
vines has pa.ssed and the jiotato harvest begins. The tubers 
liave not yet got their full growth, but there is a cry for Aroos- 
took potatoes from all over the American land, and it is early in 
the season that the>' fetch the highest prices. The harvest time 



86 IX FAIR AROOSTOOK. 

lasts until the 10th of October, by which time it is safe to assume 
that all of Aroostook's potato crop is garnered. The potatoes 
are dug with a machine which turns them from two rows at once 
into the common furrow i)etween. The picking is done by 
hand, and is tlie only part of the field work for which no prac- 
ticable machinery has lieen as yet invented. Bands of men and 
women from distant localities appear in the fall in the Aroo.stook 
farming countr\' to engage in potato picking, much as the stroll- 
ers swarm from the New York cities into the hop-growing coun- 
ties to pick hojis in the harvest season. The small and the 
damaged ])()tatoes are hauled to the starch factory- ; the mer- 
chantable ones are sold to the potato-buyer or stored in frost- 
proof dug-outs, underground structures which the farmers call 
"greenhouses," to await a better market in the spring. 

With the beginning of the potato harvest the starch mills are 
started up, and they are run at full pressure, often night and 
day, for al)out two months, or until the potato supply ceases to 
pour in. Then they are closed down, and they are not opened 
up again until the next season. The farmers hauling to these 
mills their small and damaged potatoes, receive for them from 
25 to 30 cents a bushel, which they regard almost as clear gain. 
There are 54 starch mills in Aroostook county, which produce 
annually from (5, 000 to 7,000 tons of starch. T. H. Phair, of 
Presque Isle, is the largest individual starch manufacturer in 
Aroostook ; he has 13 factories situated in nine different towns, 
and their annual output of starch is from 2,000 to 3,000 tons. 

To prepare new land for a potato cro]) it is plowed in the fall 
so that the frosts and thaws of winter shall thoroughly disinte- 
grate the sod. Then b\- harrowing in the spring the land is 
rendered sufficiently smooth and mellow for cultivation. Land 
ordinarily is planted with ])otatoes for two \ ears, then sown with 
grain and grass seed, and one croj) of grain and two crops of 
grass are taken Irom it belore it is planted again with potatoes. 
Tw(j potato crops in succession are regarded by some farmers as 
too exhaustive to the land, and the method pursued by Mr. J\. 
ly. Hayden, of Presque Isle, one of the most successful farmers 
in Aroostook county, is to ])lant one croj) of potatoes, followed 



IX FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



87 



1)v a crop of grain aiul two or three years of clover aiul herds- 
grass, before planting again with potatoes. The land is fertil- 
ized for a potato crop by plowing the aftermath of clover under 
in the fall, and by the use of commercial fertilizers containing 
the potash, the nitrogen and phosphates which the potato 
requires for its growth. Barnx ard manures are not regarded as 
of advantage to the potato crop, although the\- enrich the land 
beneficiallv for the grains and the hay. 




FRIIST-FKCIOF STORAC.K Ff>K III.IKM) BARRELS OF POTATOES 

Prof, Charles D. Woods, head of the agricultural department 
of the Maine vState University, is conducting a series of experi- 
ments at Mr. Watson's farm, in Houlton, with reference to the 
potato and its enemies, and particularly to the application of 
fungicides. Also this year there is in process on this farm an 
interesting experiment in wheat culture. Five varieties of 
wheat have been planted in five separate acres with the view of 
testing their merits by comparison. To make the experiment 
conclusive a portion of the wheat from each acre is to be sent to 



88 IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 

the Miniieaj)()Iis mills to be made into flour there, and equal 
portions are to be orround in Aroostook flouring- mills for com- 
parison with the flour made in the western mills. In recent 
years wheat culture has ])ecome an important feature in Aroos- 
took farming, to the great advantage of the land and the 
farmers' present j^rofits as well. Crops of )}0 bushels to the acre 
are common, aiid the Aroostook wheat is of the best quality. 
Flouring mills have been established in various parts of the 
count\- and their ]noduct bears comparison wilh the flour 
Ijrought froni any other part of the country. It is well that wheat 
planting is on the increase, for oats and potatoes are products 
exhausting to the land, and incessant cropping on the same 
lines might in time wear out even the fertile Aroostook soil. 

At Pre>que Isle I visited the warehouse of Mr. George E. 
Kobins(m, a potato buyer, and the establishment gave me some 
idea of the scale on which the potato industry is conducted in 
Aroostook. His potato hou.se is a building 120 feet by 60 feet 
in length and breadth, so situated on a slope that the loaded 
teams ma\- l)e driven in on the second floor and the potatoes 
sluiced to the floor below, which is on a level with the car floors 
of the Kangor and Aroostook tracks in the rear. The cellar is 
frost-proof and it has a capacity of .storing 18,000 barrels or 
35,000 bushels, of potatoes; also he has two other warehouses in 
Presque Isle, the united capacity of which is 0,000 barrels. His 
firm, the Robinson Company, has warehouses in the ten ]irincipal 
Aroostook towns, and its potato shipments during ihe i)ast 
season were 1 ,009 carloatls, or 5.")."). 000 bushels, which were 
bought at an average price of ()()i| cents a bushel. A great 
and constant demand for the Aroostook potato is for seed in 
the Middle and vSouthern States, and of ihe 1,00!) carloads of 
potatoes shipped by the Robinson Compan\- 150 carloads went 
for seed to IS different states extending from Penn.sylvania and 
Ohio southward to Texas. The seed potatoes are carefully 
selected and asserted so that oi'dy the variety desired shall l>e 
sent in response to an order^for of varieties of the ])Otato in 
Aroostook there is no end. In a list that Mr. Robinson handed 
me ai e|27r v;arielies, man\- of which bear names as poetical as 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 89 

flowers. Indeed three of tlie potatoes are roses, the I^arly, the 
Late and the Hampden Rose. Then there is the Beaut}- of 
Hebron, the New Queen, the Pride of the vSouth and the Pearl 
of Savoy, and in the way of ponderous dignity the Polaris, the 
White Elephant and the Empire State, and named in some 
moment when the prose muse had her inning, the Early Harvest, 
the Dakota Red and the I'ncle vSam. It is a wonder that with 
all its wealth of titles the Aroostook tuber is content to remain 
in business as a plain potato, instead of giving itself airs as a 
pom me de terre. 

There seems no limit to the demand for seed potatoes in the 
Southern vStates, for there the potato degenerates so fast that the 
seed has to be renewed from the north almost yearly. The same 
is true in a modified degree of the Middle vStates and, as scien- 
tific potato culture is carried in Aroostook to the liighest degree, 
with the frequent intro(hiction of new varieties, there can be 
little doubt that the Garden County eventually will be depended 
on by the entire countr\-, aiul, ])erhaps the world, for seed pota- 
toes. Tlie variet\- most in demand in the south is tlie Early 
Ro.se, while in the Middle States the potatoes that mature later 
in the season are more in favor. In Aroostook county the 
Beaut\- of Hebron, the Cxreen Mountains and the Dakota Red 
seem the most in favor at present; but the popularit\ of a i)otato 
is as transient as the reign of a society belle, and no one can 
predict what new varieties will have come to the front five \ears 
from now. 

From April 1, 1901 to April 1, 1902, there were shipped from 
Aroostook county, via the Bangor & Aroo.stook railroad, 4,431,- 
739 bushels, or 1, (ill, 540 barrels of potatoes. There were 
raised in the county in the same year .■),582,r)()o bushels or 
2,030,024 barrels of potatoes, besitles the potatoes used in mak- 
ing more than 6,000 tons of .starch. In the same _\ ear there 
were shipped over the Bangor & Aroostook road, from Aroos- 
took, It), 340 tons of hay : and there was cut in the county, by 
the mo.st reliable estimates, 59,631 tons. Of wheat there was 
brought to the mills last year 99,000 l)ushels worth $79,200 ; 
of oats, buckwheat and barley there was ])r()duced 1,200,000 



90 IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 

busliels. leturning $550,000. From stock, wool, pork, poultry, 
dairy products and eggs, $300,000 was realized. The report of 
the census bureau from which these figures are taken, .shows 
that Aroostook stands fourth among all the counties of the 
country in tlie number of her farms and, so far as computed, 
second in tlie total value of her farm products. The following 
figures from the United States census report of 1900 show the 
value of the farm and lumber products in Aroostook in the \ear 
1900: 

Potatoes $:],512,000 

Starch 420,000 

Hay 715,000 

Lumber 1,9;}0,000 

Ties. Shingles, Bark, etc . 500,000 

Cereals and Fruit (555,000 

Stock, Wool, Pork and Poultry 300,000 

Total $8,032,000 

Of this magnificent total, $5,602,000, the value of the agricul- 
tural product, was taken from the 400,000 acres of improved land 
in the county. There remains of unimproved land 4,440,000 
acres, much of which, when its valuable forest mantle shall have 
been removed, will be as good for agricultural purposes as that 
which now has been developed. 

While all farming may be said to pay well in Aroostook, the 
profits in some cases are astonishingly great. Instances are 
numerous in which the buyers of improved farms, costing from 
$4,000 to $(),000, have paid the entire amount of the purchase 
money in two years from the products of the land, and cases in 
fact are not infrequent in which the entire pa\'ment has been 
made from the gains of a single year. The average j'ield of 
Aroostook potato fields is nearly 200 bushels an acre, and there 
have been cases in the Aroostook valley in which a crop of 700 
or 800 bushels has been taken from a single acre. Probably the 
greatest ])rofit ever derived from a single crop on a field of 
similar extent anywhere in the world was' made last year by the 
firm of Cleveland & Ludwig from a 40-acre potato field on their 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 91 

fanii at Houltoii. They sold 1,400 barrels of early potatoes for 
$5,600, and 2,000 barrels of later varieties for $3,200, besides 
$55 of inferior potatoes sold to the starch factories. When the 
expenses of cultivation which, all told, amounted to $1,749.44, 
were deducted, there remained a net profit of $7.105.5(), or 
$177.64 an acre. From another Aroostook farm, that of Iv. H. 
Parkhurst tv: Co., Prescpie Isle, the gross receipts last year from 
the sale of potatoes, hay and grain, were $22,400 : in the same 
town the gross receipts of the eight leading farms, from the sale 
of the same three staples, averaged Sll,36o apiece. These 
figures serve to illustrate the rewards that go with intelligent 
farming in Aroostook, and explain the immigration through 
which mainly the ])opulation in this county increased from 
49,589 to (iO,744 in the decade between 1S90 and 1900. 

At the Exchange hotel, where I sta_\ed during my visit at 
Houlton, both Chicago and native beef were on the bill-of-fare 
on the day of my arrival, and I chose the native. Next morn- 
ing oidy native beef was servetl at breakfast and, after the meal, 
the landlord came to me aild apologizecl lor the lack of Chicago 
beef. 

" The supply of Chicago beef in town gave out yesterday, ' " 
he said. "There will be some more along later in the da}'." 

"Don't trouble to apologize," I answered. "The native 
beef, when properly prepared, is vastly better than the western 
beef. Why don't \'ou serve it altogether? " 

" The farmers will not fatten the animals for market as the 
western animals are fattened, for one thing," he said. " f^ut 
the' main reason we do not use the native beef more is that there 
are no facilities for keeping it long enough before using. We 
have no cold-storage plants in Aroostook. So we have to rely 
upon Chicago — or the Boston shippers from that cit\-, rather — 
for our supply of tender, well kept beef." 

Thus for lack of cold-storage plants, and l)ecause the farmers 
will not fatten cattle for the market, Aroostook county, with her 
grain fields and superabundance of grass and hay, exports oats 
and hay and potatoes to the westward and has to look to Chicago 
for beef. And her fields are manured almost wholly with imported 



92 



IX KAIK AkOUSTOOK. 




fertilizers, instead of llie waste products returned to the so 
through the niedimn of domestic animals. But I find that stock 
farming and dair\ino; are steadily coming into vogue in Aroos- 
took, and that in them, more even than in " King Potato," lies 
the agricultural lulureol the countw The advantages of Aroos- 
took for these industries are 
manifold. Its grasses are the 
richest and most luxuriant in 
the state ; its pasturage is the 
finest in the whole eastern 
country ; and the scorching 
droughts of other sections are 
entirely unknown. As soon 
as the hay is cut the next crop 
springs up, and in September, 
when the fields in other parts 
of New hjigland are brown 
and bare, Aroostook is cover- 
ed with a rich verdure affording abundant feed until late in the 
fall. Stock comes to the barn in excellent condition, where 
ample mows filled with the best of hay. provide their winter keep- 
ing. The Aroostook .soil, so prolific of all vegetation, is especi- 
ally adapted for the raising of vegetables in a high degree of 
perfection, and if the farmers utilize their blessings the culti\-a- 
tion of the carrf)t. the turni]) and the sugar beet for stock feeding 
will ex'entually become an industry of great y^roportions. 

It isjencouraging to the lover of fine st<jck, who believes that the 
farmers' best future lies in this branch of husl)antlry, to see the 
cattle, though relativel\ Itw in number, and the flocks, though 
small, that ap])ear in the ])HSlures as he travels the Aroostook 
farming conntx' in an\ direction. The sheep, which almost 
invariably are of the great Cotswold variet3% are very prolific 
here and with a fl<ick of ")() sheep one will see as many vigorous 
landjs disporting themselves in the spring time. The profit to 
the farmer comes both from the wool and. from the lambs which 
are sent to market. The mutton of sheep fed on the sweet 
Aroostook grass is of a qualit\- that surpasses even the famous 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



93 



English inulton. In the way of c:ittle I alreadv have referred 
to E. L. Ha>deirs herd of o'i aiiiiiKils at Presque Isle. 

The largest stock farm that I visited in the Aroostook was 
that of the Hopkins Brothers at Fort Fairfield. Here on their 
o()0-acre farm, sitnated on a l)eanliful eminence, sonthwest from 
the village, the\- have (il Durham cattle, the head of the herd 
being tlie lordl\' Shorthorn hull " NelsDii." which at four vears 
old weighs 2700 pounds. On the place also <iO hogs are kept, 
and it requires 20 horses all the time to do the work of the 
esta]:)lishment. Thiee hundred tons of hay is cut on the farm 
\early, and one ami a half tons is fed dailv to the stock. There 
is a carpenter and blacksmith shop on the ])lace, and a slaughter- 
house, and also a store in town tor the ^ale ol meat — for one of 
the ])urposes of the Hopkins Brothers is the supplving of 
.Aroostook raised beet in place of the impoited l)eef in the 
markets of the countw 

Hi taking uin- lea\e of " Fair 
Aroostook," it is with the laith 
that I shall come again. 
"Whoever drinks of the Rio 
Cxrande waters will return to 
the river, no matter liow far 
away he goes," sa>- the Mexi- 
cans — and in like measure 
Aroostook's incomparable 
charms must draw 1)ack to her 
whomsoever has once fallen 
under her .spell, though seas 
and continents divide. I n the 
\ast woods and garden lantl 
the types of humanit\- are as 
composite and satisfying as 
the blending green and brown 
and gold of her harvest fields. 
Here one finds New F^ngland. moral and religious, with her 
harsh and narrow aspects of human character softened and 
broadened into harmonies akin to the landscape charm of the 




>ri> 1 '1- ri' 



M 



IN FAIR AROOSTOOK. 



rounded fertile hills that roll back to the sky line on every hand. 
Plere is vScandinavia, trans]ilanted into New Sweden and Stock- 
holm and Westnianland. with roots that have struck deep and 
l)ranches that ha\e waxed and spread until the slender colony 
that settled in the Maine forest thirt\-two >ears ago has 
become a large and ])rosi>erous connnunity made up of the best 
of citizens. And here, on the 1>ank of the St. John, is mediae- 
val France merged in harmony with our institutions, its sons 
and daughters eager learners at American schools, and its note 
of patriotic sentiment expressed in the refrain of its Acadian folk- 
,song, " Mndawaska," "How good it is to l)e an American." 




II At i ill 



HOW TO GET TO THIS 

'^ACADIA OF AROOSTOOK" 

That is the next thing >ou will naturally want to 
know after you have read in this book of the scenic 
l:)eauties. the domestic and industrial advantages and 
the fish and game possibilities of Maine's northern- 
most territory. The answer is simple : 

RIDE TO IT IN THE SOLID VESTIBULED TRAINS 

OR PULLMAN PALACE CARS OF THE 

BANGOR & AROOSTOOK R. R. 

The K. <S: A. offers the easiest, quickest, and most 
direct route to all the towns and villages of northern 
Maine. The \'an Buren extension takes one from 
Caribou to New Sweden, Jemtland and so on up to 
the state boundary line at Van Buren village. The 
Ashland branch and h'ish River extension assure the 
most comfortable of transportation up through the 
Fish River region, to Kagle Lake, Wallagrass and 
Fort Kent. Both these extensions traverse a country 
of unlimited attractions not only for the home hunter 
and i)usiness builder, but for the game hunter and 
angler as well. The expense of travelling to or in 
this region will be found very moderate, and good 
accommodations await the traveller in practically 
every settlement and town. 

Our handsome big guidebook, " In Pine Tree Jungles," ( sent anywhere 
upon receipt of 1 cents in stamps i contains much interesting matter concern- 
ing northern Aroostook. Or if any specific information is wanted regarding 
this region, we will gladly furnish it on request. Address 

GEO. M. HOUGHTON, Traffic Manager, 

BANGOR & AROOSTOOK R. R., BANGOR, MAINE. 



DEC 31 I9U2 








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